Plenary Speakers
Professor Zeti Azura Mohamed Hussein
National University of Malaysia
Biography
Zeti is a Professor in Bioinformatics at the Department of Applied Physics, Faculty of Science and Technology, University Kebangsaan Malaysia. She obtained her BSc in Biology and MSc in Pharmaceutical Science from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and a PhD in Bioinformatics from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom. Currently she is a Director at the Institute of Systems Biology (INBIOSIS), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia since August 2019.
Her research focuses on the analysis of big data biology and developing a systematic knowledge-based method combining protein interactions, functions and networks to understand the pathobiology of diseases, especially Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS), Colorectal Cancer (CRC) and Ankylosing Spondylitis.
Her work also investigates the relationships between three major pathways; signalling, regulatory and metabolic pathways using Network Biology approach to shed light on the pathobiology of diseases and to understand the phenotype associations in diseases as well as identifying many interesting modules such as potential biomarkers, shared proteins and pathways, and drug repurposing amongst others, which can’t be fully annotated using a single type of data only. Her aim is to provide new knowledge discovery from extensive bioinformatic analysis to be used in facilitating accurate diagnosis and effective treatment towards the realization of precision and personalised medicine.
However the abovementioned method is also applicable to other datasets too, for example in search for missing genes in the glucosinalote biosynthetic pathway in plants, or comparing the defence related pathways in monocots and dicots. So today, the talk will describe the application of this method on the plant dataset.
Professor Gyaneshwer Chaubey
Banaras Hindu University
Biography
Gyaneshwer Chaubey has spent most of his research career in Estonian Biocentre and University of Tartu, Estonia, as a Ph.D. student and thereafter in scientist and senior scientist positions. He was also a visiting scientist to the Sanger Centre, United Kingdom. In October 2017, he returned to India and joined the Department of Zoology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, as a full professor. Chaubey’s research is focused on the peopling of South and Southeast Asia. He is known for his in-depth work on several ethnic groups of South Asia, including Andaman, Austroasiatic, Indian Jews, Siddi, Roma, and Parsis. Currently, by using various kinds of uniparental and biparental genetic markers, he is tracing the role of migration, drift, and selection in the peopling of South Asia by using available computational tools and developing new ones.
Professor Louxin Zhang
National University of Singapore
Biography
ZHANG Louxin is a professor of applied mathematics at the National University of Singapore. He was educated as an undergraduate in Lanzhou University, China from 1979-1983 and received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo, Canada in 1996. Professor Zhang has been with the Department of Mathematics at the National University of Singapore since 2001. His current research interests include bioinformatics in comparative genomics, big cancer genomics and phylogenetic analysis. He is also interested in discrete algorithms and theory of computing.
Dr Bruno Andre Gaeta
University of New South Wales Sydney
Biography
Dr. Bruno Gaëta has had a varied career spanning service provision in a bioinformatics core facility, and senior scientist in the bioinformatics software industry, as well as more traditional academic positions. He is currently Director of Studies in Bioinformatics Engineering at UNSW Sydney where he administers Australia’s largest and longest-lived undergraduate bioinformatics program. His research interests include the application of bioinformatics to immunology and immunogenetics, and the development of curricula in bioinformatics education.
Dr Gaeta has served on the executive committees of both APBioNet and the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) for many years, and remains a Director of the ISCB. He is part of an international effort to develop core competencies in computational biology and bioinformatics in order to establish and consolidate curricula in what is still a new and growing discipline.
Professor Mohd Firdaus Raih
National University of Malaysia
Biography
Mohd Firdaus Raih is the Deputy Dean (Research and Innovation), Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. He has a BSc (Molecular and Cellular Biology – Biochemistry) from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and a PhD (Molecular Biophysics) from the University of Sheffield. His research is in the field of bioinformatics and molecular biophysics. His research group focuses on the computational analysis of macromolecular structures and the discovery and characterization of genome encoded non-protein coding elements and regulatory systems. The results of Firdaus’ research has been published in various peer-reviewed journals including Nucleic Acids Research, Science and other highly regarded journals. The results of the work have been deployed and made publicly accessible as web applications and databases.
