Prof. Rongshan Yu(SMIEEE, FIET)

Vice Director, National Institute for Data Science in Health and Medicine, Xiamen University

Dr. Rongshan Yu received his bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering with minor in Applied Mathematics from Shanghai Jiaotong University, China in 1995, and the PhD degree from the National University of Singapore (NUS, Singapore) in 2004. He is currently with the Department of Computer Science, Xiamen University as a professor, and vice-director of the National Institute for Data Science in Health and Medicine, Xiamen University. His research interests include high-throughput multi-omics data analysis, precision medicine, and medical artificial intelligence. He has more than 180 journal/conference publications and holds more than 20 US/International patents. Dr. Yu was a member of the Technical Committee of the Multimedia Systems and Applications of the IEEE Circuits & Systems Society, and chair of Internet of Thing (IoT) Special Interest Group (SIG) of IEEE Signal Processing Society. He served as standard project editors of ISO/IEC 14496-3/AMD.5 (MPEG Audio Scalable Lossless Coding) and ISO/IEC 14496-5:2001/Amd.10 (SSC, DST, ALS, and SLS reference software), and associated editors of IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech and Language Processing and IEEE Access. He is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET). In 2007, he received the National Technology Award, Singapore in 2007 in recognition of his contributions to international standards.

Prof. Yasukazu Nakamura (H-index: 66)

National Institute of Genetics

 

Professor Yasukazu Nakamura is a faculty member in Division of Informatics at National Institute of Genetics (NIG), part of The Research Organization of Information and Systems (ROIS) in Japan, where he leads the Genome Informatics Laboratory. His research focuses on the analysis and annotation of various genomes, the construction of genome databases, and the development of tools and workflows to enhance the quality of genomic data. He has played a crucial role in analyzing critical microbial, plant, and animal genomes, advancing our understanding of genetics at the molecular level. Professor Nakamura is also instrumental in managing the DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ), a partner of the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC), one of the world’s largest public repositories of genetic information. As Head of International Collaboration, he promotes the open sharing of nucleotide sequence data, ensuring DDBJ remains an invaluable resource for the global scientific community. According to Scopus, his genomics research includes 194 peer-reviewed papers and an h-index of 66. He is actively involved in international collaborations and partnerships, improving genome annotation accuracy, enhancing genome databases' value, and establishing standards for genome analysis and database development.

 

Prof. Yumei Li
Soochow University

 

Dr. Yumei Li received her bachelor’s degree from Nankai University in 2014 and her Ph.D. from Peking University in 2019. She then was appointed as a postdoctoral fellow at UC Irvine (2019–2022), supported by the George E. Hewitt Foundation for Medical Research. She is currently a professor at School of Basic Medicine, Soochow University. Her research focuses on transcriptomics and epigenomics, with particular interest in the development and application of bioinformatics approaches to study epigenetic regulation in both fundamental biological processes and disease pathogenesis. She has authored more than 20 publications in high-impact journals, including PNAS, Molecular Cell, and Genome Biology. Dr. Li is a member of the Omics Branch of the Chinese Stroke Association. She has been recognized as a Jiangsu Specially-Appointed Professor, and her work is supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province.

 

Assoc. Prof. Balachandran Manavalan
Sungkyunkwan University

 

Dr. Balachandran Manavalan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Integrative Biotechnology at Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU). His core research is at the intersection of AI applications with biology, environmental science and nanotechnology. His lab develops cutting-edge bioinformatics methods to identify biomarkers for early disease detection, prediction peptide therapeutic function and DNA/RNA modification sites, assess water toxicity, and protein corona formation. Dr. Manavalan has secured multi year grants from the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) and KHIDI. He has authored over 150 research articles. According to ScholarGPS, he is ranked among the top 20 scholars globally in both Peptides and Bioinformatics.

 

Speech Title: "Universal Prediction of RNA Modifications Across Mammals Using Hierarchical Transformers"

 

Abstract: RNA modifications represent critical post-transcriptional regulators of gene expression and immune cell function, acting as central components of the epi-transcriptomic landscape. These chemical marks modulate RNA stability, splicing, translation, and localization, with specific modification sites emerging as key contributors to human health and disease. Over the past eight years, we have developed several computational frameworks for the individual prediction of RNA modifications and contributed to the field through rigorous, unbiased benchmarking. However, single-modification prediction tools remain limited in practical utility. To address this limitation, we present HiFormer-RM, the first comprehensive framework for the simultaneous prediction of sixteen prominent human RNA modification types—including m⁶A, m⁵C, m⁷G, A-to-I, Ψ, m¹A, m⁶Am, Am, Gm, Cm, Um, m⁵U, ac⁴C, D, m²G, and m²,²G. HiFormer-RM leverages a hierarchical transformer architecture capable of learning both local sequence motifs and global contextual dependencies through multi-mer feature extraction. This enables robust and generalizable predictions across diverse sequence contexts. The results demonstrate that HiFormer-RM significantly outperforms existing baseline models and reveals conserved sequence patterns associated with RNA modification across evolutionary lineages. Together, these findings establish HiFormer-RM as a powerful tool for advancing the understanding of epi-transcriptomic regulation and provide a unified framework for multi-modification prediction across species.

 

 

Dr. Jingjing Liu
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

 

Jingjing Liu received a Ph.D. in Environmental Science from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) in 2016. After graduating from HKUST, she joined the Henry Lam Group at the department of biological and chemical engineering at HKUST, as a postdoctoral research scientist. There, she switched her research direction to proteomics and systems biology. Dr. Liu's research interests primarily focus on: 1. Gut microbiota and colorectal cancer, 2. Omics data analysis and mining, and 3. Mass spectrometry.

 

Speech Title: "Thioproline Modulates Gut Microbiota and Metabolism to Resist Colorectal Cancer"

 

Abstract: Colorectal cancer (CRC) ranks among the top three cancers globally in terms of incidence and mortality, and it is driven by an inflammatory environment in the gut, which can be induced by dysbiosis of the gut microbiome. Shaping gut microbiota community is proved effective in alleviate intestinal inflammation. Given the significant role of gut bacteria in the development of CRC, the ability of thioproline—a food bioactive—to modulate gut bacteria and resist CRC remains largely underexplored. To understand the effects of thioproline on gut microbiota community, we employed an integrated approach combining metagenomics and metabolomics to investigate the mechanisms through which thioproline regulates gut microbiota and exerts its anticancer effects. The metagenome and metabolome data reavled that thioproline treatment significantly changed gut miacrobiota community composition and metabolism in CRC. Our study reveals thioproline’s dual role in gut microbiota remodeling and metabolic regulation, leading to reduced CRC-associated inflammation. This study highlights its therapeutic potential in in modulating gut microbiota composition and metabolism to combat CRC, providing valuable insights for future studies and applications.

 

Dr. Jin Wang
Capital Medical University

 

Dr. Jin Wang received her Ph.D. in Physiology from Peking University in 2022 and is a researcher at Beijing Ditan Hospital, Capital Medical University. Her research focuses on mechanotransduction and cell–extracellular matrix (ECM) interactions in the development of cardiovascular disease. Her research aims to identify mechanosensitive cell populations and to elucidate the molecular mechanisms by which they contribute to cardiovascular disease. Her findings have been published in high-impact journals such as Bioactive Materials and Circulation Research. She was selected for the Youth Talent Support Program of the Beijing Association for Science and Technology.

 

 

 

 

 

Previous Speakers

 

Prof. Yuan-Ting Zhang City University of Hongkong	Prof. Alexander Suvoror Institute of Experimental Medicine, St. Petersburg	Prof. David Zhang The Chinese University of Hongkong, China (Shenzhen)
Prof.Tun-Wen Pai National Taipei University of Technology	Prof. Dong-Qing Wei Shanghai Jiaotong University	Prof. TSUI Kwok-Wing Stephen The Chinese University of Hongkong
Prof. Cathy Wu University of Delaware	Prof. Xuegong Zhang Tsinghua University	Prof. Yi Pan Chinese Academy of Sciences
Prof. Bairong Shen Sichuan University	Prof. Wing-Kin Sung The Chinese University of Hongkong, and Hongkong Genome Institute	Prof. Chanchal Mitra University of Hyderabad
Assoc. Prof. Jie Zheng ShanghaiTech University	Prof. Peiyu Zhang Henan University	Prof. Zheng Zhou Chinese Academy of Sciences
Prof. Le Zhang Sichuan University	Prof. Fei Guo Central South University	Prof. Bin Liu Beijing Institute of Technology
Mr. Xiaoqiang Li China National GeneBank DataBase	Prof. Guan Ning Lin Shanghai Jiao Tong University	Assoc. Prof. Hon-Cheong So The Chinese University of Hongkong
Prof. Limsoon Wong (ACM Fellow) National University of Singapore	Prof. Bing Zhang Shanghai Jiao Tong University	Prof. An-Yuan Guo West China Hospital, Sichuan University
Prof. Pui-Chi Gigi Lo City University of Xiamen	Asst. Prof. Mengsha Tong Xiamen University	Prof. Jose Nacher Toho University