Research FocusThe Signal Processing and Computational Biology Group is an inter-disciplinary theoretical and computational research group in the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). We focus on the development of high dimensional (Big Data) statistical signal processing and machine learning methods, and their diverse applications including communication, robust estimation, computational biology, and financial engineering. Our group is also focused on the theory and applications of random matrices.
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News
November 2019
Congrats to Ahmed for his paper entitled "Deconvolving mutational patterns of poliovirus outbreaks reveals its intrinsic fitness landscape" being accepted to Nature Communications. This is joint work with Arup Chakraborty (MIT) and John Barton (University of California-Riverside). Well done!
Congrats also to Ahmed for having two more papers accepted to Bioinformatics. The papers are:
- "RocaSec: A standalone GUI-based package for robust co-evolutionary analysis of proteins". Joint with David Morales-Jimenez (Queens University, Belfast)
- "MPF-BML: A standalone GUI-based package for maximum entropy model inference". Joint with Ray Louie (Kirby Institute, UNSW) and John Barton (University of California-Riverside).
October 2019
We welcome back Faraz and Umer after both spent 3 months visiting John Barton at the University of California (Riverside).
September 2019
Matthew contributed an invited talk at the Physical Concepts and Computational Models in Immunology workshop at MIT and the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard.
Congratulations to Liusha Yang (our group alumni, now at the Shenzhen Big Data Research Institute) for being selected to represent HKUST as a "Rising Star" at the Asia Dean's Forum Rising Stars Workshop to be held in Seoul, Korea.
Congrats to Laureano for his paper entitled "Extreme eigenvalue distributions of Jacobi ensembles: New exact representations, asymptotics and finite size corrections" being accepted to Nuclear Physics B. This is joint work with David Morales (Queens University Belfast).
August 2019
Congratulations to Nicolas Auguin for successfully defending his Ph.D.! Nicolas' thesis was entitled Random Matrix Analysis of Gram Matrices and Large Robust Covariance Estimators with Applications. We wish Nicolas all the best as he takes up his new position in the finance world, joining Cube Research and Technologies in HK.
Congrats to Ahmed for receiving the Best Poster Prize for his work on HCV data analysis at the 24th International Bioinformatics Workshop on Virus Evolution and Molecular Epidemiology (VEME) held at Hong Kong U.
July 2019
A pre-print of Saqib's work entitled "Resolving genetic linkage reveals patterns of selection in HIV-1 evolution" has been posted on bioArXiv. This is joint work with Ray Louie (UNSW) and John Barton (University of California, Riverside).
Congrats to Faraz and Ahmed for their paper "Sub-dominant principal components inform new vaccine targets for HIV Gag" being accepted for publication in Bioinformatics. This was joint work with David Morales (Queens University Belfast).
June 2019
Our paper "Asymptotics of eigenstructure of sample correlation matrices for high-dimensional spiked models" has been accepted for publication in Statistica Sinica. This is joint work with David Morales (Queens University Belfast), Iain Johnstone and Jeha Yang (Stanford).
May 2019
Congrats to Ahmed for his paper "Identifying immunologically-vulnerable regions of the HCV E2 glycoprotein and broadly neutralizing antibodies that target them" that has appeared in Nature Communications. This is joint work with Ray Louie (UNSW).
Congrats to our group's Final Year Project student, Phoomraphee Leunam, whose project was selected as the Best Final Year Project in the ECE Department. He also received the Silver Award for the industry demo competition. Phoom's work developed deep learning solutions to detect eye diseases from images extracted from diabetic patients in Hong Kong. It was a collaboration with the HK Eye Hospital.
January - March 2019
Our group's research was highlighted in:
November 2018
An article related to our group's research, titled "Fighting disease with data and hope", is published in The Standard newspaper.
September 2018
Matthew was invited to present an "IdeasLab" talk on the use of Big Data Methods to Guide Rational Vaccine Design at the World Economic Forum. Here is the YouTube link.
Matthew was also selected as a Young Scientist of the World Economic Forum.
Matthew was also selected as a Young Scientist of the World Economic Forum.
Welcome to Hang Zhang (from Shanghai Jiaotong), Awais Wahab Shah (from KFUPM), and Neel Kanth (from IIT-Delhi) to our group as new Ph.D. students. Congrats also to Awais and Neel for being selected as recipients of the prestigious Hong Kong Ph.D. Fellowship.
August 2018Liusha Yang successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis entitled Random-Matrix-Based High-Dimensional Covariance Estimation and Signal Processing Applications. Congratulations to Dr. Yang! We wish her all the best as she starts her new job at the Shenzhen Big Data Research Institute.
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June 2018Talk at 2018 Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Healthcare Summit, The Ritz Carlton, International Commerce Center, Hong Kong
Title: Inferring the fitness landscape of HIV by unsupervised learning Speaker: Raymond Louie |
May 2018
Talk at 2018 Hospital Authority Convention, Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center, Hong Kong
Title: Using data science to find weak spots of Hepatitis C virus: Implications for rational vaccine design
Speaker: Matthew R. McKay
Title: Using data science to find weak spots of Hepatitis C virus: Implications for rational vaccine design
Speaker: Matthew R. McKay
February 2018
Our recent paper, published in PNAS, has received considerable media attention in Hong Kong. Here are some examples (complete list on News page):
January 2018
Matthew is now Area Editor (Feature Articles) of the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine.
Videos of HKUST
- HKUST Campus, DJI: 2013, 2015, 2016
- HKUST 25th Anniversary
- HKUST Corporate
- Student Diversity
- Hong Kong Ph.D. Fellowship (HKPFS) Scheme (see also here)
Useful Links
- Impact Story on our lab by HKUST's Development and Alumni Office, http://giving.ust.hk/en/index.php
- Prof. Weichuan Yu's Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Lab (a partner lab in ECE), http://bioinformatics.ust.hk/
- ECE Department website, http://www.ece.ust.hk
- HKUST website, http://www.ust.hk/
-- Banner photo taken by HKUST alumnus Terence Pang