2008

The lab hosted the visit of Shunfu Xu Nanjing Medical University, China from during January 2008 - April 2008.

The lab received 4 new grants:
(1) Dong Xu, jointly with Himadri Pakrasi (PI) et al., Discovery and Utilization of Enzymes for Renewable Biofuels Production, Missouri Life Science Trust Fund, January 2008 - December 2009.
(2) Dong Xu, jointly with Henry Nguyen (PI) and Gary Stacy, Construction of Proteome and Metabolome Maps of Soybean to Improve Yield and Value-Added Traits, United Soybean Board, January 2008 - December 2010.
(3) Dong Xu (PI), jointly with Jianlin Chen, Henry Nguyen, and Gary Stacy, Developing a Web Server for Soybean Translational Genomics, Missouri Soybean Merchandising Council (MSMC), April 2008 - April 2010.
(4) Dong Xu, jointly with Ye Duan et al. (PI), 3D Facial Phenotype Exploration for Autism, July 2008 - July 2009.

2007

MUPRED SSP developed at the lab is featured in the IEEE Computational Intelligence society's magazine.

Chao Zhang, Trupti Joshi and Nick Lin won the "Best Poster" award for "GENEFAS: A Tool to Predict Protein Function Using Multiple Sources of Data" at the IEEE 7th International Conference on Bioinformatics and Bioengineering (BIBE 2007) conference in October 2007.

The lab had a summer picnic at Mark Twain State Park on Aug 25.(Pictures)

The lab hosted the visit of Professor Prof. Guohuo Lin from University of Alberta during August 1 - September 1.

Dong Xu is promoted to full professor starting from September 1, 2007.

Huidong Shi and Dong Xu received a research grant "High-Throughput Bisulfite Sequencing Method for Exploring the Breast Cancer Epigenome" from US Army.

Rajkumar Bondugula obtained his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science and started as a researcher at Biotechnology HPC Software Applications Institute, Fort Detrick, Maryland.

Dong Xu is appointed to be a member of NIH Biodata Management and Analysis Panel for the period of July 1, 2007-June 30, 2011.

Dong Xu received Senior Faculty Research Award, College of Engineering, University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007.

Gyan Prakash Srivastava is a winner in the category of Biological Sciences at the 2007 MU Research and Creative Activities Forum.

Dong Xu is appointed as the Chair of Computer Science Department starting from January 1, 2007.

2006

Dr. Patrick Zhao from the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation visited the lab.

Dr. A. Keith Dunker from Informatics Indiana University Schools of Medicine & Informatics visited the lab.

Dr. Arcady Mushegian from Stowers Institute visited the lab.

Dr. Ying Xu from University of Georgia visited the lab.

Rajkumar Bondugula won the First Place for the poster "MUPRED: Protein Secondary Prediction System" in the 1st Student Poster Competition sponsored by the IEEE-CIS Mizzou Chapter and the College of Engineering at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

The lab had a summer trip to Lake of Ozark on July 8.(Pictures)

Mihail Popescu accepted a tenure-track position at the Health Management and Informatics Department, University of Missouri-Columbia, starting from July.

Dong Xu (PI), Yi Shang, and Ioan Kosztin received an NIH grant on "New Scoring, Assembly and Evaluation Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction".

Sarah Yu from Vanderbilt University, Nashville and Erik Taylor from University of Texas, Austin are doing summer internships at the lab.

Peter Dempsey won the prestigious Benton Scholarship given by Curtis Benton and Barbara Kortright Benton in March.

Rajkumar Bondugula received GSA Superior Graduate Achievement Award in March.

2005

The lab had a fall group picnic at the Katy Trail.

The lab moved to the Life Sciences Center on September 26th.

The lab hosted the visit of Professor Luonan Chen from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics, Osaka Sangyo University during July 27 - August 20.  He gave a talk titled "Designing and analyzing gene regulatory networks" on August 15th. 

Dr. Xiufeng Wan started as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Microbiology, Miami University after a two-year postdoctoral at the lab.

Zach Nichols from the University of South Carolina, Jacob Traas from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and Ricardo J. Restrepo at the University of Missouri, Columbia, are doing summer internships at the lab.

The lab had a spring group picnic at the Katy Trail on May 22, 2005. (Pictures)

Peter Dempsey won the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research for the development in BioAnalyzer in April.

Ashwin Ganapathy obtained an M.S. degree from MU Computer Science Department and will start as a Bioinformatics Specialist at Expergen, Inc, Madison, WI in January 2005.

2004

Dong Xu (PI), jointly with Gary Stacey Dave Emerich and Xinhua Zhuang received a grant "Computational Analyses of Protein Mass Spectroscopy Data" from Monsanto Research Funds for Oct. 2004 - Sept. 2006.

Dr. Nengbing Tao and Dr. Maolong Lu from Monsanto visited the lab on November 17, 2004.

Trupti Joshi is appointed as Lab Manager, starting from October 25, 2004.

The lab had a group picnic at Lake Dixie on October 16, 2004. (Picture)

Prof. Luonan Chen from Osaka Sangyo University, Japan visited the lab and gave a seminar on campus on October 8, 2004.

Dr. Dong Xu's son Benjamin Wenlong Xu was born with 7 pounds and 14 ounces on September 15, 2004.

Ognen Duzlevski won the first place in the state level Karate tournament in September 2004.

Dr. Dong Xu is teaching Computational Methods in Bioinformatics during Fall 2004 semester.

Yu Chen obtained Ph.D. degree from University of Tennessee and joined Novartis, Inc. in August.

Prof. Guohuo Lin from University of Alberta visited the lab during July 15 to August 6.

Yu Chen was awarded "Science Alliance Awards for Outstanding Scholarly Achievement" by the Division of Biology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville in the amount of $3,000.

Ashwin Ganapathy is selected as one of the Region Finalist for the EMBS-Whitaker Student Paper Competition, IEEE EBMS Conference to be held in San Francisco, CA on September 2004.

Lei Wang from University of Texas, Dallas, joined the Digital Biology Laboratory as an Intern from June till August.

Prof. Jie Liang from University of Illinois at Chicago visited the lab on April 13, 2004.

Rajkumar Bondugula awarded “Outstanding Computer Science Graduate Student in the College of Engineering” during Missouri Honor awards ceremony held on March12th, 2004.

February 2004. Dr. Dong Xu is appointed as a part-time faculty, U.S. Department of Energy Higher Education Research Experience at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory for Distinguished Visiting Scientists and Faculty.

Dr. Dong Xu taught cs303- Design and Analysis of Algorithms-I during Winter 2004 semester.

Dr. Dong Xu became a core faculty member in Biomedical and Health Informatics Research Training Program.

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2003
Digital Biology Laboratory Website was launched on December 2003.

Dr. Nickolai Alexandrov, Manager for Bioinformatics, Ceres Inc. visited Digital Biology Lab on 10/16/2003.(Seminar)

Dr. Dong Xu taught cecs301 - Computational Bioinformatics during Fall 2003 semester.

Digital Biology Laboratory was successfully set up on September 2003.