Listing of news from the Institute of Bioinformatics at University of Georgia
Karen Gonzalez of Dr. Eva-Maria Strauch’s lab successfully defended her dissertation titled, “Computational Vaccine Design of Class I Fusion Proteins” on Thursday, September 21, 2023. Congratulations Dr. Gonzalez!
Abby Moore of Dr. Art Edison’s lab successfully defended her dissertation, “Spreadsheets enable the provenance of biological material to mutually benefit authors and the scientific community.” on Friday, August 25, 2023.
Congratulations Dr. Moore!
Please join the IOB in congratulating Kun-Lin Ho for being selected by the UGA-Winship Research Summit committee as one of two poster presentation winners from UGA. Kun-Lin is focused on cancer research and is mentored by IOB faculty member Dr. Shaying Zhou.
Jingxuan Chen of Dr. Casey Bergman’s lab successfully defended her dissertation, “Bioinformatics and evolutionary genomics of transposable elements in yeast” on Thursday, June 29, 2023.
Congratulations Dr. Chen!
Joshua Watson of Dr. Shaying Zhao’s lab successfully defended his dissertation titled, “Human basal-like breast cancer is represented by one of the two mammary tumor subtypes in dogs.” on Friday, April 14, 2023.
Congratulations Dr. Watson!
Natarajan Kannan, professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the Institute of Bioinformatics, leads an internationally recognized program at the interface of bioinformatics and biochemistry. Developing and applying sophisticated statistical and computational tools, he maps the complex relationships connecting sequence, structure, function and regulation in large families of protein kinases. These enzymes turn signals on and off in cells, a critical part of cell communication. Kinases are involved in many diseases and in related drug development studies as anti-cancer and infectious disease targets. He has also developed powerful informatics tools and deep learning models for the classification and evolutionary analysis of glycosyltransferases, a large family of enzymes. He is leveraging new information from these proteins from different cell, tissue, disease types and organisms to develop predictions about how they propagate signals in diseases. And he continues to train the next generation of scientists to apply new computational tools for biological discovery.
research.uga.edu/research-awards/2023/04/05/natarajan-kannan-2/
IOB doctoral student Ehsan Suez has earned a 2023 Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award from the Center for Teaching and Learning for superior teaching skills.
Ruijie (Rachel) Xu of Dr. Liliana Salvador’s lab successfully defended her dissertation, “Using Multi-Omics Data to Study Leptospira sp. Across Multiple Biological Scales” on Friday, April 7th, 2023.
Congratulations Dr. Xu!
April 6, 2023
Thank you to all the students who participated in this year’s University of Georgia Three Minute Thesis (3MT™) Competition.
The competition is open to all currently enrolled UGA master’s and doctoral students, and this year’s 3MT™ drew dozens of submissions from across the university. Several preliminary heats led to the selection of ten finalists, who submitted their presentations for a panel of judges.
The final competition was held Wednesday, April 5, 2023, at the University Chapel and was livestreamed on on Facebook.
This year’s grand prize winner was Karen Gonzalez, a doctoral student in the Institute of Bioinformatics, for her presentation titled “Humans vs Viruses.”
Karen Gonzalez, Grand Prize Winner
The runner-up was Chisom Okoli, a doctoral student in the Department of Nutritional Sciences, for presenting “Equity in Wellness: Development of an eLearning Training to Improve Healthy Beverage Consumption in Black Families of Young Children.”
Chisom Okoli, Runner Up Winner
The people’s choice award, which is given to the contestant who receives the most votes from viewers of the competition, went to Yang Su, a graduate student in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, for his presentation of “The Bacteria Glycans: Trojan Horses in Disguise.”
Yang Su, People’s Choice Winner
Three Minute Thesis (3MT™) is an academic competition developed by The University of Queensland (UQ), Australia.
Lambodhar Damodaran of Dr. Justin Bahl’s lab successfully defended his dissertation, “Molecular Epidemiology of Contemporary Seasonal Influenza Epidemics” on Thursday, March 16th, 2023.
Congratulations Dr. Damodaran!
