We are thrilled to announce that Dr Ma Cong’s RPg student Zhang Zeqi won a gold medal in the international Kaggle's AI competition. This achievement highlights the exceptional talent and dedication of our students in leveraging AI to solve cutting-edge drug discovery-related challenges.
The competition is part of the Competition Track jointly organized by Kaggle, the world's largest data science competition platform, and NeurIPS 2023, a top computational science conference. It is open to AI developers from all over the world. With over 1000 teams participating, winning this award shows that Dr Ma Cong’s laboratory has a strong capacity in using AI to solve cutting-edge drug discovery-related problems.
This competition, held as part of the Competition Track jointly organized by Kaggle and NeurIPS 2023, focused on predicting the impact of small molecules on gene expression across diverse cell types. It tasked AI developers worldwide with devising innovative methods to forecast cellular responses to small molecule drug perturbations, a critical area with immense implications for drug discovery and fundamental biological research.
Zhang Zeqi's success stands as a testament to his dedication and expertise in the realm of AI and drug discovery. His innovative approach, under the guidance of Dr. Ma Cong, involved developing a cutting-edge neural network-based model that incorporated advanced feature extraction techniques.
In his reflections, Zhang Zeqi expressed profound gratitude to his mentors, acknowledging the pivotal role played by Dr. Ma Cong and Dr. Xu Min from UTS SEDE. Their guidance, support, and provision of resources were instrumental in his journey towards victory.
Zhang Zeqi's success underscores the invaluable role of mentorship and collaboration in pushing the boundaries of research and innovation. His experience in the competition not only honed his AI skills but also enriched his ongoing research endeavors in AI-based drug discovery.
As we celebrate Zhang Zeqi's remarkable accomplishment, we extend our warm congratulations and look forward to witnessing his continued contributions to the field.
