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UC
Riverside Graduate Student Wins Best Poster Award at International Conference
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Computer science graduate student Andres Figueroa won the Best
Poster competition at the Seventh Annual International Conference on REsearch in COmputational
Molecular Biology (RECOMB). (Photo credit: A. Figueroa.)
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RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- Computer science student Andres
Figueroa went from UC Riverside to a conference in Germany with a poster in
hand and returned home with a laptop, the coveted prize his poster won. Of
the more than 180 poster presentations at the Seventh Annual International
Conference on Research in Computational Molecular Biology (RECOMB) held last
month in Berlin, Figueroa's poster was recognized with the Best Poster award
(see photo at end of release).
The title of Figueroa's poster was 'Clustering binary fingerprint vectors
with missing values for DNA array data analysis.' Other co-authors of the
winning poster were James Borneman, assistant
professor of plant pathology, and Tao Jiang,
professor of computer science and engineering at UC Riverside. The poster is
based on a paper that Figueroa, Borneman and Jiang have submitted for publication to the Journal of
Computational Biology.
"This is my first award in the United
States," said Figueroa, 32, whose
previous award, in Mexico,
was the 'Best Student in 1995' at the Universidad Autonoma
del Estado
de Morelos, from where he acquired his B.S. in
mathematics in 1998. "It is an honor to receive the Best Poster award. I
was surprised when I learned that my work had been chosen as the winning
poster. After all, there were many works of high quality and excellence at
the poster session by researchers from different parts of the world. I am
thrilled that people in my field think the research I am doing is
important."
Figueroa's Ph.D. research focuses on designing, implementing, and developing
efficient algorithms for DNA microarray data
analysis (DNA microarray is the exact point
placement of numerous DNA samples on a very small chip.). He expects his
research will further help classify microorganisms, detect certain diseases
such as leukemia, and facilitate the discovery of new genes.
"The work presented in Andres's poster describes a novel approach for
the cluster analysis of DNA microarray," said
Tao Jiang, who is Figueroa's Ph.D. advisor.
(Cluster analysis is the clustering, or grouping, of large data sets.)
"Most existing methods are based on traditional statistical approaches
and use normalized 'real intensity values' -- intensity values that
correspond to real numbers. Our method discretizes
the intensity values, i.e., it simplifies them by mapping the real numbers on
to integers. This has the potential of saving a lot of storage space because discretized values take less space to store than real
values. Moreover, the poster showed that our method offers better clustering
than traditional methods in the classification of DNA sequences."
At present, Figueroa holds a fellowship from UC Mexus/CONACYT
(the University of California Institute for Mexico
and the United States/the National Council for Science and Technology in Mexico).
CONACYT provided Figueroa with financial support for his first two years at
UC Riverside to cover tuition, living expenses and health insurance; UC Mexus has provided similar assistance thereafter.
Figueroa expects to graduate from UC Riverside in summer 2004. "I will
look for a faculty position in computational biology," he said. He has
already put the new laptop he won to full use in his research. While this has
shrunk his free time, he still manages to play racquetball. He has been the
racquetball champion at UC Riverside each quarter since fall 2002.
Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) is the largest and fastest-growing
department in the Marlan and Rosemary
Bourns College
of Engineering at UC Riverside. While students have the opportunity to study
in many areas, the department offers active research programs in algorithm
design, artificial intelligence, computational biology, computer architecture,
computer networks, distributed systems, operating systems, databases,
compilers, software engineering, digital systems, VLSI/CAD, embedded systems
design, and theory of computation. Numerous laboratories exist within the CSE
Department, providing undergraduates with opportunities for hands-on
experience and interaction with faculty. These include the Database and Datamining Lab, Mobile and Multimedia Networking Lab,
Architecture and Embedded Systems Lab, Network Security Lab, Riverside
Graphics Lab, and Algorithms and Computational Biology Lab.
Photo Caption: A
poster by UC Riverside's Andres Figueroa, entitled "Clustering binary
fingerprint vectors with missing values for DNA array data analysis,"
was announced as the winner of the Best Poster at the Seventh Annual
International Conference on REsearch in COmputational Molecular Biology (RECOMB), Berlin, Germany. (Photo credit: A. Figueroa.)
· Computer
Science and Engineering Department, UC Riverside
· The
Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering,
UC Riverside
· Andres
Figueroa
· Prof.
Tao Jiang
The University of California, Riverside offers undergraduate and graduate education
to nearly 16,000 students and has a projected enrollment of 21,000 students
by 2010. It is the fastest growing and most ethnically diverse campus of the
preeminent ten-campus University of California system, the largest public research
university system in the world. The picturesque 1,200-acre campus is located
at the foot of the Box Springs Mountains near downtown Riverside in Southern California. More information about UC Riverside is
available at www.ucr.edu or by calling
909-787-5185. For a listing of faculty experts on a variety of topics, please
visit http://mmr.ucr.edu/experts/.
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