Photo: Daily Messenger
Arshia Zernab Hassan has been awarded the 2024-25 Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (DDF) awards by The Department of Computer Science & Engineering (CS&E) amongst seven recipients.
This prestigious fellowship is granted to the University’s most distinguished Ph.D. candidates, allowing them to focus entirely on their dissertation projects during the fellowship year. Each recipient will receive a $25,000 stipend, tuition for up to 14 thesis credits per semester, and subsidised health insurance through the Graduate Assistant Health Plan.
The Bangladeshi PhD student has been working under the guidance of Professor Chad Myers in pioneering the development of computational methods for interpreting data from genome-wide CRISPR/Cas9 screens. Arshia’s groundbreaking research is poised to make significant contributions to computational biology.
CRISPR/Cas9, a revolutionary tool for genome editing, enables precise and large-scale editing of genomes, facilitating the construction of mutants in human cells. This technology is invaluable for inferring functional relationships among genes critical to cancer growth.
Additionally, chemical-genetic CRISPR screens, where mutant cell populations are exposed to chemical compounds, provide insights into the chemicals' effects on cancer cells, aiding in the development of precise drug treatments.
Despite the promise of these experimental technologies, there remains a scarcity of computational methods to process and interpret the resulting data and accurately quantify genetic interactions—a gap that Hassan's dissertation aims to fill.
Her research extends to developing deep-learning-based methods which utilise CRISPR chemical-genetic and other genomic datasets to predict cancer sensitivity to potential drugs. Her innovative approaches for enhancing information content in CRISPR screens were published in the esteemed Molecular Systems Biology journal, highlighting her contributions to computational biology.
The CS&E community congratulates Arshia Zernab Hassan and the other awardees for their exceptional achievements and wishes them success in their research endeavours.
Messenger/Naim/Sourov
