Nibiao Zheng Finishes Dissertation
Nibiao Zheng finishes his dissertation and graduates with a P.h. D from the Bioinformatics Institute in December 2013.
Congratulations to Yan Li on Successfully Completing Dissertation
Yan Li successfully completed her dissertation and graduated in December of 2013.
Liang Feng Successfully Defends Dissertation
Congratulations to Liang Feng for successfully defending her dissertation! Her dissertation is titled “Gene Pair Rearrangement during the Evolution of Flowering Plants.”
IOB Student Chosen for Google Summer Program
IOB first-year Ph.D. student Zheng Ruan was accepted for the Google Summer of Code 2013 program to work with the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent). His project is titled “Codon Alignment and Analysis in Biopython” and he will be mentored by current Biopython developers Eric Talevich and Peter Cock. Congratulations Zheng!
IOB Student Awarded Innovative and Interdisciplinary Research Grant
Chi Zhang has been awarded the 2013 Innovative and Interdisciplinary Research Grant. This grant is part of a program established by the Graduate School to support innovation and interdisciplinarity in the research conducted by doctoral students. Congratulations Chi!
Symposium Award Winners
Congratulations to all of the symposium award winners! Duo Peng won the Outstanding Poster Award, and Ujwal Bagal won the Ying Xu Outstanding Student Paper Award.
UGA partners with Emory, GA Tech and CDC on malaria systems biology research center
IOB Director Jessica Kissinger and IOB and Mathematics assistant professor Juan Gutierriez are part of a malaria research center that was awarded up to $19.4 million by a recent NIH contract. The malaria host-pathogen interaction center, MaHPIC, will study the systems biology of non-human primate, and human malaria.
Liang Liu awarded NSF Grant
IOB Faculty Member (Dr. Natarajan Kannan) makes the front page in the July 30, 2012 issue of Columns
Professor will use NSF Award to trace origin of a protein family.
To read more about the NSF award, click HERE for details.
Dr. Natarajan Kannan is a Georgia Cancer Coalition Distinguished Scholar, an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and a member of the UGA Institute of Bioinformatics.
Celine Hong – 2012 James L. Carmon Scholarship Award Recipient
Celine Hong, PhD candidate in the Institute of Bioinformatics, uses innovative ideas and cutting-edge computational methods to address biological problems related to cancer. One of the main topics in Hong’s research is to find a way to enhance cancer diagnosis by identifying biomarkers that can be used to detect the disease at an early stage. Her first project was to develop a computational method for predicting excreted protein to find non-invasive biomarkers in urine. Using experimental techniques to complement her computational prediction, such as western blots and antibody arrays, her work led to the discovery that a protein called endothelial lipase is greatly suppressed in urine from gastric cancer patients versus control. This non-invasive method of testing shows great promise as a diagnostic tool for other types of cancer and a variety of other diseases. Hong has continued her studies with a focus on finding microRNA biomarkers, as well as studying the apoptosis pathways in cancer cells. She is developing and applying novel computational techniques to make meaningful discoveries in her research.