First Session
Prof. Luis Pedro Coelho
The global microbiome. Big data & Small genes
Luis Pedro Coelho is a group leader at the Centre for Microbiome Research (QUT) and an associate investigator at the Centre for Data Science (QUT). His research focuses on using very large scale datasets of the global microbiome to understand microbial ecology. His group is also known for developing high-quality tools, most notably SemiBin which uses self-supervised learning and neural networks for metagenomics binning. Recently, he led a global study which found nearly one million new antimicrobial peptides (a class of antibiotics) from the global microbiome.
Before moving to Australia in 2023, Luis got a PhD from Carnegie Mellon University in the (US), worked at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Germany, and was a faculty member at Fudan University in Shanghai (China).
Second Session
Prof. Tatsuya Akutsu
Graph Theoretic Approaches to Analysis & Control of Biological Networks
Tatsuya Akutsu received B.Eng. and M.Eng. in Aeronautics and D.Eng. in Information Engineering from University of Tokyo, in 1984, 1986 and 1989, respectively. From 1989 to 1994, he was with Mechanical Engineering Laboratory, Japan. From 1994 to 1996, he was an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Gunma University. From 1996 to 2001, he was an Associate Professor in Human Genome Center, Institute of Medical Science, University of Tokyo.
Since 2001, he has been a Professor in Bioinformatics Center, Institute for Chemical Research, Kyoto University. He is a fellow of Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ). His research interests include bioinformatics, neural networks, complex networks, and discrete algorithms.
Third Session
Prof. Nguyen Thi Hoai
From Vietnamese Traditional Remedies to Biomedical Informatics-Assisted Drug Discovery
Nguyen Thi Hoai is a team leader in natural product chemistry and pharmacognosy, with a focus on Vietnamese medicinal herbs; the extraction and isolation of active compounds from medicinal plants; green extraction techniques; optimization of extraction processes; and evaluation of the biological activities of compounds and extracts from medicinal herbs. She is currently a Professor at the Faculty of Pharmacy, Hue University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Vietnam.
She obtained her BS (1999), MS (2003), and PhD (2008) from Hanoi University of Pharmacy, and was a postdoctoral fellow at Toyama University (2014–2015). She received the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science National Award in 2017. She currently serves as a member of the Council of the National Foundation for Science and Technology Development in Vietnam.