Listing of news from the Institute of Bioinformatics at University of Georgia
Shufan Zhang, advisors Dr. Jonathan Arnold and Dr. Thirimachos Bourlai, successfully defended her dissertation titled, “High-Throughput Quantification of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi in Sorghum: A Roadmap to Building Robust Deep Learning–Based Tools for Automated Image Analysis” on Monday, April 28, 2025. Congratulations Dr. Zhang!
Leke Lyu of Dr. Justin Bahl’s lab successfully defended his dissertation titled, “Tracking Local-Scale Viral Transmission Using Genomic Data” on Friday, April 11, 2025. Congratulations Dr. Lyu!
Gabriella Veytsel of Dr. Justin Bahl’s lab successfully defended her dissertation titled, “Phylodynamic Modeling Insights into Viral Evolution, Genomic Epidemiology, and Landscape Ecology from Human, Animal, and Wastewater Surveillance” on Monday, April 7, 2025. Congratulations Dr. Veytsel!
IOB Students Win Second Place at HATCH 2025!
This March, eight IOB graduate students competed in the the Hudson Alpha Tech Challenge (HATCH) in Huntsville, AL. HATCH is a yearly hackathon competition hosted by the biotech company Hudson Alpha to promote computational innovations for the life sciences. One team of IOB students consisting of Nathan Gravel, Darrian Roy Talamantes, Parnian Rahimi, and Leandro Alama won second place in the professional/college category for their creation of Maize Watch, a machine learning model which could identify and differentiate several common diseases of maize from leaf photographs and pinpoint the disease hotspots on the leaf. The team developed, trained, and deployed their model in just one day. Congratulations to Nathan, Darrian, Parnian, and Leandro!
IOB PhD Candidate Olivia Asher is one of four students from the University of Georgia Graduate School selected to attend the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Catalyzing Advocacy in Science and Engineering workshop. The CASE workshop provides students an opportunity to learn about science policy and to engage with their elected officials on Capitol Hill. This year’s workshop will be held April 6-9, 2025 in Washington, D.C.
Congratulations Olivia!
IOB PhD Candidate Ehsan Suez was selected as a 2025 Future Faculty Fellows Program (3FP). This program, sponsored jointly by the Graduate School and the Center for Teaching and Learning, is a year-long professional development program that brings together 15 innovative and dedicated teaching assistants from across campus to talk about, reflect upon, and improve their teaching, while contributing to their preparation for the academic job market and the rigors of their first faculty positions. More informatoin is available here, https://ctl.uga.edu/programs/graduate-students/future-faculty-fellows/.
Congratulations Ehsan!
Isaac Torres of Dr. Jonathan Arnold’s lab successfully defended his dissertation titled, “MINE: Maximally Informative Next Experiment – Genetics Application and Novel Computational Methodology” on Friday, November 22, 2024. Congratulations Dr. Torres!
Rebecca Piri of Dr. Kelly Dawe’s lab successfully defended her dissertation titled, “Evolution of tandem repeat array patterns in maize” on Thursday, October 24, 2024. Congratulations Dr. Piri!
IOB doctoral student Damián Santiago-Sosa of Dr. Adrianne Hoarfrost’s lab has been selected to receive an ARCS Foundation Scholarship Award. For more information, visit University of Georgia Office of Research ARCS Foundation Schollarship Award.
You can watch Damián’s application video above. Congratulations Damián!
Sohyun Bang of Dr. Bob Schmitz’s lab successfully defended her dissertation titled, “Advancing understanding of cis-regulation through machine learning and single-cell genomics” on Monday, June 10, 2024. Congratulations Dr. Bang!
