Our graduating student, Mr Ho Yin Andy Yuen, won a Best Paper Award under the category of Bioinformatics at the 20th IEEE International Conference on BioInformatics and BioEngineering (IEEE BIBE 2020) with his final year Capstone Project titled “Better Link Prediction for Protein-Protein Interaction Networks”.
The objective of this research project is to design better computational techniques for predicting molecular interactions inside biological organisms. Under the supervision of Dr Jesper Jansson, Associate Professor of COMP, Andy specifically chose to work on the Protein-Protein Interaction Networks and used the link prediction technique to predict missing connections of a graph based on its structure. They improved the ability of the current state-of-the-art models in describing the protein interaction networks and further applied it algorithmically to perform link prediction and successfully predicted protein interactions more accurately.
Andy thanked Dr Jansson for working with him as the co-author of the paper. He also expressed his deep gratitude for Dr Jansson’s invaluable support and guidance throughout his study and research journey at COMP. Andy is currently a project assistant at the Biomaterial Laboratory, Department of Biomedical Engineering of PolyU. He employs computational techniques to generate and analyse laboratory images and raw data for characterising and elucidating cellular mechanisms.
IEEE BIBE 2020 aims at building synergies among the disciplines of Bioinformatics, Bioengineering and Biomedical. The IEEE BIBE series provides a common platform for the cross-fertilization of ideas, and for shaping knowledge and scientific achievements by bridging these disciplines into an interactive and engaging forum.