Statement of Research Interests

In the most general sense, the subject of my research interest lies in the interdisciplinary area of biology, computer science, and statistics - currently known as bioinformatics - looking at how can computer (information) science and statistics help us unravel the mysteries of biology. In another words, I am using computer science and statistics as tools to understand life and its numerous aspects.

On the biological side, I am interested in genomics (DNA fingerprinting, gene pool evolution and differentiation), transcriptomics (which genes are expressed at what conditions and at what levels) and interactomics (how are these gene products interacting in different conditions). On the computer science side of the game, I am engrossed with effective management and use of biological resource which includes published manuscripts. Although the knowledge transfer from computer science and statistics to biology is predominant in bioinformatics, the reverse flow is inevitable and should be encouraged. I believe that current bio-experimental techniques (such as microarray, MPSS, mass spectrometry) has been efficient in producing large volumes of data but the bottleneck lies in the corresponding efficient use of these data. Quoting from a senior academic, I believe that much of science has been deductionist (breaking down into constituent components and studying a single component in extreme detail which manifested in the "one-gene-one-thesis" approach) and maybe we have enough components to re-build systems towards our initial goal of biological science - what is life and how it works?

Within this framework, I am exploring the general issue of multi-paradigm computational and statistical meta-analysis and management of readily available biological data with an emphasis to "squeeze" more information out of available biological data than what it was originally intended for. I believe that scientific knowledge can be re-organized for more efficient use. I call this knowledge configuration.

In the primary research to product development continuum, I place myself at the application-directed research to product prototype stage. Naturally, I have the need to see where can my research eventuate without the full enthusiasm to bring the research to result in an actual product. As a result, I will rather pass the baton to the next in line to finish the home-run.