|
Computational biologist Xianghong Jasmine Zhou received a 2006 Sloan Fellowship in recognition of her promising work in genomics and bioinformatics.
|
|
A Boost to a Young Scientist’s Career
Computational biologist named Sloan Fellow
By Eva Emerson
March 2006
USC College computational biologist Xianghong Jasmine Zhou has been named a 2006 Sloan Research Fellow.
Established in 1955 by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Sloan
Fellowships provide early-career scientists and scholars the support
and recognition necessary to establish independent research programs
and jumpstart their careers.
Zhou is among 116 researchers chosen to receive one of this year’s
prestigious fellowships, which include a two-year, $45,000 unrestricted
grant. Fellows, chosen from a field of 500 nominees, are free to pursue
whatever lines of inquiry they find most compelling. Evidence of
independent creativity in research is one of the most important
considerations in the selection of the awardees, according to the
foundation.
“For the last five years, the College has recruited more junior faculty
than senior faculty,” said Joseph Aoun, dean of USC College. “Our goal
has been to nurture these future leaders and provide them with an
environment that will allow them to succeed. Jasmine is a rising leader
in the field of computational biology, and it is wonderful that she has
been recognized for her outstanding scholarship.”
“Jasmine is the latest in a long line of recent Sloan recipients at USC
College,” said Wayne Raskind, dean of faculty in the College. “We are
very proud and wish her continued success.”
Zhou’s award marks the ninth fellowship received by a College math or
biology faculty member in the last seven years. In 2005, awardees were
evolutionary geneticist Jeff Wall and mathematician Tobias Ekholm.
“With this unrestricted grant, I plan to explore new directions in my
research,” said Zhou, an assistant professor in the molecular and
computational biology section of biological sciences.
Currently, Zhou leads a number of projects in bioinformatics and
genomics, including the development of new data mining tools and
software that could lead to insights into the aging process and the
origins of cancer and other complex diseases.
Zhou studies integrative genomics — the use of bioinformatics to
integrate the enormous amount of genomic data produced by lab
scientists. Results of genetic and genomic experiments can be difficult
to directly compare even when the same kind experimental platform has
been used. Zhou recently unveiled a new software program, called
iArray, that allows biomedical researchers to do integrative analyses
of microarray gene expression data generated by different platforms and
different research groups.
Zhou plans to use iArray and similar tools in her own work predicting
the functions of genes, including the many thousands sequenced in the
Human Genome Project but otherwise uncharacterized.
“We may have the sequence [of all human genes], but it will still take
an enormous amount of experimental effort to study what the genes
actually do in the cell. We think using computational predictions will
help speed up the process,” she said.
Her other major project is an attempt to reconstruct the network of
genes that regulate the cell and its activities. In a paper published
in Nature Biotechnology last year, she and her colleagues proposed a
novel approach to the problem.
Zhou received an undergraduate degree in biochemistry from the
University of Tuebingen in Germany in 1995. Subsequently, she earned a
postgraduate degree in computer science and a doctorate in
bioinformatics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in
Zurich. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University
before joining the USC faculty in 2003.
The Sloan Foundation selects awardees in the fields of chemistry,
computer science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience, physics and
computational and evolutionary molecular biology. Zhou was one of the
12 scientists honored in the molecular biology category.
|
|
|
