Van Anh Huynh-ThuView profile
Assistant Professor
Vân Anh Huynh-Thu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Liège (Belgium). Her research focuses on improving machine learning techniques with an emphasis on model interpretability. She is based at B28: Systems and Modeling in Quartier Polytech, Allée de la Découverte 10, 4000 Liège, Belgium. Her primary research interests span Machine Learning , Bioinformatics , and Gene Regulatory Network Inference . Dr. Huynh-Thu has developed several influential methods including GENIE3, dynGENIE3, and Jump3 for inferring gene regulatory networks from expression data. Her work bridges the gap between machine learning theory and biological applications, particularly in understanding complex disease mechanisms through computational approaches. She has made significant contributions to interpretable machine learning models that maintain high predictive accuracy while providing insights into feature importance and model behavior. Her research demonstrates a progression from purely computational methods toward translational applications in medical research. Analysis of her recent publications reveals a clear trajectory from foundational work on gene regulatory network inference toward broader applications in medical research, particularly in Crohn's disease. Her research increasingly integrates machine learning with clinical applications, demonstrating a shift from purely computational methods to translational research with direct medical implications. The consistent emphasis across her work is on interpretability, rigorous validation, and the application of tree-based methods to complex biological systems, with a growing focus on proteomics and biomarker discovery for inflammatory bowel diseases. Dr. Huynh-Thu maintains an active GitHub presence with implementations of her methods, demonstrating her commitment to open science and reproducibility. Her software repositories have garnered significant attention from the research community, with GENIE3 alone having 88 stars and 37 forks on GitHub. She has developed multiple implementations of her algorithms in Python, MATLAB, and R, making them accessible to researchers across different computational environments. Her work has been influential in the DREAM challenges, where GENIE3 was the best performer in two network inference competitions.
