Ongoing Research and Research Directions

• Protein Structure Prediction and Modeling: We are interested in developing effective computational methods for protein fold recognition, protein structure prediction and modeling, and protein complex prediction; and applying these tools to solve real biological problems. One of our key techniques is protein threading.

• Expert system for protein structure predction: We are interested in developiong  automated protein structure prediction capabilities which could fully utilize all available information derived from many different  protein structure prediction and analysis tools, in an intelligent manner. One particular paradigm we are currently exploring is the expter system paradigm.

• Hybrid Methods for Protein Structure Determination: We are interested in developing hybrid techniques, taking advantage of the strengths of computational techniques and high-throughput experimental data, in support of high-throughput protein structure determination. We are particularly interested in utilizing sparse NMR data.

• Gene Expression Data Analysis and Biological Pathway Construction: We are interested in developing novel computational techniques for information extraction from large-scale gene expression data and applying them to biological pathway studies. We are currently focusing our studies on microbes, plants and cancer pathways.

• Computational Methods for Mass Spectrometry Data Analysis: We are interested in developing highly effective computational methods for identification of proteins and protein-protein interactions through analyzing mass spectrometry data and chemical cross-linking data.

• Cancer Bioinformatics Resarch: We are interested investigating computational methods to provide clues about cancer formation and cancer detection through mining cancer patients data and computational modeling onco protein structures and signaling pathways. 

• High-performance Bio-computing: We are interested in developing efficient parallel and distributed  computer codes for computation-intensive algorithms for biological data mining, protein structure predictions and biological pathway inference and modeling.