News from the Zhang Lab

• The editorial in the 2011 January issue of PLoS Computational Biology reviewed the major development of the journal in the past years. Among the highlights of this editorial is a list of research articles published since 2005 through October 2010 that have accrued over 10,000 downloads (Table 1). our paper - X. Zhou, J. Ruan, G. Wang and W. Zhang*, Characterization and identification of microRNA core promoters in four model species, PLoS Computational Biology, 3(3):e37, 2007 - is one of these highly downloaded papers. (January, 2011)
  
• I will move up the echelon of the PLoS Computational Biology editorial board, from Associate Editor to Deputy Editor, to take on more editorial responsibilities. PLoS CB is a primary journal of the field of computational biology. (November, 2010)
  
• The program committee of Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) 2010 has selected our paper, "A novel transition based encoding scheme for planning as Satisfiability", to receive the Outstanding Paper Award.  Graduate student Ruoyan Huang is the first author and will present the paper at the conference.  Ruoyan is co-supervised by Professors Yixin Chen and Weixiong Zhang, who are on the author list of the paper.  The competition is high this year since the other top AI conference, IJCAI, is not held this year.  The AAAI-10 program committee selected two Outstanding Papers out of 264 accepted papers, which were chosen from 982 submissions. (May, 2009)
  
• Sharlee Climer joined the lab and the CSE department as a Research Assistant Professor.  (April, 2009)
  
• Anne Bowcock (Genetics, WashU) and Weixiong Zhang received an ARRA grant under the Recovery Act to develop and apply systems biology approaches to study psoriasis, an inflammatory disease of the skin for which there is currently no cure.  (Septemer, 2009)
• Justin Fay (Genetics, WashU) and Weixiong Zhang received an ARRA grant (an NIH R01) under the Recover Act to study drug response using yeast as the model system. (Septemer, 2009)
• Weixiong Zhang is a co-PI of a newly funded NIH project (PI: Skip Virgin, Pathology and Immunology, WashU) supplemental to the center grant of Midwest Regional Center of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases.  (June, 2009)
  
• Anne Bowcock (Genetics, WashU) and Weixiong Zhang received a grant from Washington University Cancer Center to study small RNAs in prostate cancer. (June, 2009)
• Weixiong Zhang has received a Director's Award from WashU Alzeheimer's Disease Research Center for a study of small RNAs in Alzheimer brains.  (May, 2009)
• Weixiong Zhang has been invited to give a talk on transcriptional regulation at one of the symposia of the 9th International Plant Molecular Biology (IPMB) Congress, St. Louis, MO, Oct 25-30, 2009.  (May, 2009)
  
• Weixiong Zhang has been invited to give a talk on abiotic stress inducible miRNAs in plants at the 11th Danforth Plant Sciences Center Annual Fall Symposium, September, 23-25, 2009. (Feburary, 2009)
• Monika Ray has successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis.  (January, 2009)
  
• Weixiong Zhang has been invited to give a talk at the Non-coding RNA and Aging Symposium, which is part of the 19th IAGG (Intern. Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics) World Congress, Paris, France, July 5-9, 2009.  (January, 2009)
• Zhao Xing has successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis.  (December, 2008)
• Starting January, 2009, Weixiong Zhang will be an Associate Editor of the international journal of Artificial Intellignece, the primary journal for the field of artificial intelligence.  (Dec. 2008)
• Weixiong Zhang has joined the Editorial Advisory Board of The Open Systems Biology Journal.  (August, 2008)
• Weixiong Zhang has recived a new NSF grant, jointly with Ralph Quatrano, professor in Dept. of Biology at WashU, to work on transcriptome analysis and applications to stress responses in plants.  (July, 2008)
• Weixiong Zhang will join J. of Alzheimer's Disease as an Associate Editor.  (July, 2008)
  
• Weixiong Zhang has joined PLoS Computational Biology as an Associate Editor.  (April, 2008)
• Weixiong Zhang will be an invited speaker at Gordon Conference on Salt & Water Stress in Plants, Sept. 7-12, 2008.  (November, 2007)
  
• Weixiong Zhang have received a grant from the Alzheimer's Association, a nonprofit organization, for our research on developing computational systems biology approaches to analyzing gene expression, modeling transcriptome, and identifying genetic risk factors for late-onset Alzheimer's disease, a leading dementia in aging population. (June, 2007)
• Jianhua Ruan has successfully defended hisPh.D. thesis.  (July, 2007)
• Sharlee Climer has successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis.  (May, 2007)
• Weixiong Zhang has joined the editorial board of the international journal of Artificial Intellignece, the primary journal for the field of artificial intelligence.  (Dec. 2006)
  
• Weixiong Zhang has given an invited talk on Data mining methods for modeling gene expression regulation and their applications at The 2006 IEEE Intern. Conf. on Data Mining.  (Dec. 2006)
  
• The MaxPlan planner developed by the Washington University Team - Zhao Xing, Yixin Chen and Weixiong Zhang - won the First Place Prize for the Optimal Planning Track of the 5th International Planning Competition at the 16th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling, 2006.  (July, 2006)