Listing of news from the Institute of Bioinformatics at University of Georgia
IOB is excited to announce that three faculty members have received promotions.
Dr. Shaying Zhao has been promoted to Professor.
Dr. Liang Liu has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Dr. Juan Gutierrez has been promoted to Associate Professor.
Congratulations!!!
IOB graduate student Duo Peng has been awarded an Innovative and Interdisciplinary Research Grant from the UGA Graduate School.
In addition, Duo successfully defended his masters thesis, “Frequent Intra-family Recombination in the Largest Repository of Antigen Variants in the Protozoan Pathogen Trypanosoma cruzi“.
Duo will continue his research in the Tarleton lab, while pursuing a doctoral degree in Cellular Biology.
Congratulations for both the grant award and the thesis defense!
Recent PhD graduate Anita Nivedha has accepted a Post-doc position with Beckman Research Institute. Dr. Nivedha will work on GPCRs and coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulation method.
Beckman Research Institute of an adjoining medical center together form City of Hope, a cancer center located in the suburbs of Los Angeles, California.
Congratulations to Dr. Nivedha on the new position!
Recent IOB graduate Chi Zhang has been awarded a Graduate Student Excellence-in-Research Award.
Initiated in 1999 to recognize the quality and significance of graduate student scholarship, these awards may be given in five areas: Fine Arts, Humanities and Letters, Life Sciences, Mathematical and Physical Sciences, and Applied Studies.
Chi Zhang, a recent doctoral graduate in bioinformatics, studies the mechanisms of cancer initiation, progression, metastasis and post-metastasis development using large-scale data analyses of cancer tissue samples and computer modeling. Much of his research focuses on scientific Warburg’s theory, which states that the primary cause of cancer is the replacement of oxygen in normal body cells by a fermentation of sugar. Zhang uses new genomic data to explore this theory more completely by examining the fundamental metabolic changes that appear to be the primary cause of cancer in multiple tissues. His work could lead to new approaches to cancer prevention and treatment. Zhang is currently working as a postdoctoral associate in the department of biochemistry and molecular biology.
Dr. Jessica Kissinger has been awarded the 2016 Richard Reiff Award, The University of Georgia’s highest award for internationalization. Dr. Kissinger has created an extensive international research network. This award is richly deserved.
Dr. Scott Jackson has published “Landscape and evolutionary dynamics of terminal repeat retrotransposons in miniature in plant genomes” in Genome Biology.
An NIH R21 proposal based on the work of IOB graduate student Duo Peng, who works in the Tarleton lab, has been funded. The title of the proposal is “Development of CRISPR/Cas system for study of trans-sialidase family genes in Trypanosoma cruzi”
Liang Liu and Jessie Kissinger are key contributors to a 62 genome pathogen analysis published in Nature Communications this week.
Click here to read “Local admixture of amplified and diversified secreted pathogenesis determinants shapes mosaic Toxoplasma gondii genomes“
Six students have joined the Institute of Bioinformatics to pursue doctorate degrees in Bioinformatics.
Burair Alsaihati
Liang-Chin Huang
Yiran Li
Rahil Taujale
Joshua Watson
Shumeng Zhang
We’re excited to welcome them to the program and the IOB community!
As the year comes to a close, we’d like to again congratulate the 11 students who completed their Ph.D. degrees in Bioinformatics in 2015.
Dr. Ahmad Al-Omari
Dr. Yulun Chiu
Dr. Tess Griffin
Dr. Yongjie Huang
Dr. Fei Ji
Dr. Spandana Makeneni
Dr. Joydeep Mitra
Dr. Anita Nivedha
Dr. Arunima Singh
Dr. Chi Zhang
Dr. Dong Zhang
We wish them the best of luck in the upcoming year as they starts their careers!
