The four outstanding students selected as the 2023-2024 IDSC Fellows presented their proposed projects at a launch symposium held at the Richter Library on November 28. This was followed by presentations from the inaugural cohort of the Provost’s Fellowship in Interdisciplinary Computing awardees. If you missed it, watch on YouTube or join us for the closing event on April 30.
Madeleine Dawson | 3rd year PhD in Ocean Sciences
PROJECT TITLE: Island Wake Segmentation and Characterization from Synthetic Aperture Radar Imagery: A Deep Learning Approach
Madeleine is currently working with Dr. Hans Graber at the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science. She received her Bachelor of Science in Biological Engineering from the University of Missouri-Columbia before beginning her PhD at the University of Miami. Her current research is focused on the characterization of island wakes through spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar datasets. As an IDSC Fellow, the utilization of deep learning techniques will aid in classifying highly dynamic and turbulent features of the island wakes to create accurate parameterizations for future predictions.
Anna Golikova | Senior majoring in Biology
PROJECT TITLE: Identification of Bacterial Viruses in Two Reef-Building Corals, Pseudodiploria Strigosa and Montastraea Cavernosa
Anna is majoring in Biology with minors in Chemistry, Computer Science, and Psychology. After learning about viral diversity in the “Biology of Viruses” course offered at UM, Anna joined the Silveira Lab to delve deeper into marine viral ecology. Anna started working on the project that aimed to isolate and identify seawater viruses that infect coral-associated bacteria and that may be involved in coral diseases. As an IDSC Fellow, she hopes to conduct bioinformatics analysis, including genome annotations and comparative genomics study, of her isolated bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria) and their hosts in order to explore how bacterial viruses could contribute to the emergence of pathogens in coral reefs.
Tianhao Liu | 3rd year PhD in Biostatistics
PROJECT TITLE: Spectral Graph Theory Methods Using Eigenpairs with Small Eigenvalues
Tianhao is working under the supervision of Dr. Daniel Díaz at the Division of Biostatistics, in the Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. He received his MSc in Biostatistics in 2020 from UM. His research centers around pattern recognition and clustering using advanced statistical and machine learning methods. As an IDSC Fellow, Tianhao hopes to explore how to make use of the eigenvectors with the smallest eigenvalues in random graph models.
Christian Ramsoomair | 3rd year MD/PhD in the Miller School of Medicine’s Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP)
PROJECT TITLE: Locus-Specific Characterization of Transposable Elements in Glioblastoma
Christian is in his first year of graduate studies working under the mentorship of Drs. Danny Reinberg and Ashish Shah in the Sheila and David Fuente Graduate Program in Cancer Biology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. He received his Bachelor of Liberal Arts in Chemistry (concentration in Biochemistry) from College of the Holy Cross (Worcester, MA). During the IDSC Fellows program, Christian is seeking to characterize the role of retroelements in Glioblastoma.
IDSC Fellows Capstone Event 4/30
Join us on Tuesday, April 30, 2024, 3:00-5:00 PM in person at the Richter Library 3rd Floor Conference Room #343 for this free event, open to UM Faculty, Staff, and Students. Enjoy light refreshments as the 2023-2024 IDSC Fellows share their research progress and conclusions.
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