November 2007


Yuan (Alan) Qi, PhD
Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Assistant Professor of Statistics
Assistant Professor of Biology (by courtesy)
Purdue University, 305 N. University Street,
West Lafayette, IN 47907-2107
Email: alanqi@cs.purdue.edu alanqi@stat.purdue.edu
===================================================
Dear graduate students,

As a new faculty member in statistics and CS, I am looking for motivated graduate students who are interested in statistical machine learning, or bioinformatics, or other millions of applications of machine learning (e.g., information extraction, finance & economics, computer vision, etc). I plan to work with students in the spring semester by offering them independent study courses. RA positions are available later based on the class project performance. In addition, RA positions, starting from the spring semester, may be available to students with outstanding record and matched research experience.

Specific research topics of my group include
1) Machine learning:
statistical inference and learning on graphical models, nonparametric Bayesian approaches, approximate inference for large-scale problems, social network modeling, learning with high-dimensional or massive data (e.g. biological datasets), etc.

2) Computational/systems biology:
learning regulatory networks, modeling metabolic pathways, evolution models of biological sequences and networks, RNA structure prediction, etc.

3) Other applications of machine learning:
biomedical imaging data analysis, web document (e.g. blogs) modeling, learning methods for material science or chemistry, etc.

If you are interested in machine learning or computational biology or if you are looking for exciting research projects, send me an email with your CV or resume and tell me what your research interest is. Due to my busy schedule, I might not be able to reply all the emails. Students with solid background in machine learning, probability, stochastic processes, linear algebra, optimization, or bioinformatics, are especially welcome!

Kind regards,

Alan Qi

P.S. 1: I will have an information session for interested students on Nov 27 afternoon 6pm. I will describe both research opportunities in my group and courses I plan to teach in 2008. Free pizza will be available on the first-come-first-serve basis. Another announcement about this information session will be sent out sometime next week; but please mark your calendar now.

P.S. 2: for your information, here is a short biography of mine: Yuan (Alan) Qi received the Ph.D. degree from the MIT Media Laboratory in 2005 and worked as a postdoctoral associate at MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He joined Purdue as an assistant professor in departments of computer science and statistics in 2007. He also holds a courtesy faculty position in biology. His main research interests include statistical machine learning and computational biology.

His work has led to publications in the top journals and conferences in machine learning, computational biology, computer vision, and wireless communications, including Nature Biotechnology, Journal of Machine Learning Research, Bioinformatics, PLos Computational Biology, Neural Information Processing Systems, International Conference on Machine
Learning, IEEE conference on Computer Vision & Pattern Recognition, IEEE Trans. Wireless Communication, and IEEE Trans. Medical Imaging. He has a patent with Microsoft Research Cambridge, UK. His collaborative research projects have been reported by MIT news, Washington Post, United Press International, and Xinhua News agency.

Center for Information Services and High Performance Computing,
Technical University of Dresden, Germany

Applications from highly qualified candidates are invited for a full
postdoctoral fellow position in Mathematical Biology (one to three year(s)
depending on funding). The goal is to coordinate the cancer and
angiogenesis modelling research in our group in close contact with
medical and experimental  partners.

The successful candidate will conduct her or his research complementing
existing projects utilizing a broad spectrum of theoretical tools with a
focus on multi-scale modelling of spatio-temporal pattern formation.

The ideal candidate holds a Ph.D. in physics, mathematics or biology (or
similar), has demonstrated expertise in mathematical biology, network
analysis and stochastic methods and has an interest in molecular cell
biology and biophysics. Strong communication skills are important for
the close collaborations with experimentalists and medical doctors.

The Center for Information Services and High Performance Computing,
Technical University of Dresden, Germany, hosts a department focusing on
the mathematical modelling of biological systems (head: Andreas
Deutsch), in which the envisaged research will be conducted. Dresden
campus offers a multidisciplinary research landscape unique in Europe.
The city of Dresden is situated in the Elbe valley that is also rich in
culture and impressive scenery.

The position is available immediately. Deadline for applications (by
email, including two letters of recommendation): November 15, 2007.

Contact:
Andreas Deutsch, andreas.deutsch@tu-dresden.de
and for general information:
http://rcswww.zih.tu-dresden.de/~imc