معرفی
Yijun Sun is a Professor of Bioinformatics in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University at Buffalo (UB), part of the Jacobs School of Medicine & Biomedical Sciences. He also serves as Associate Director of AI and Health Science at the Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science. His roles include adjunct professorships in Computer Science and Biostatistics.
Education: PhD in Electrical Engineering (University of Florida, 2004), MS in Electrical Engineering (University of Florida, 2003), and dual BS degrees in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University (1995).
Research Focus:
Dr. Sun's work bridges machine learning, bioinformatics, and computational biology. Key areas include:
- Cancer Genomics: Developing algorithms to model cancer progression and identify molecular drivers.
- Metagenomics: Analyzing microbial communities, particularly in oral and gut microbiomes.
- Artificial Intelligence: Applying ML techniques to disease modeling and biomarker discovery.
His lab has created widely used tools for analyzing high-dimensional genomic data, adopted by over 200 global institutions.
Grants & Awards:
- UB Exceptional Scholars: Sustained Achievement Award (2025)
- Multiple NIH/NSF grants totaling over $20M for projects on cancer progression and microbiome analysis.
- IEEE M. Barry Carlton Best Transactions Paper Award (2005).
Advising & Labs:
Current PhD students include Wei Zheng, Le Yang, Runpu Chen, and Jiho Sohn. Former mentees hold roles at institutions like GlaxoSmithKline and HERE Technologies.
His lab collaborates across UB schools (Medicine, Public Health, Arts & Sciences) and externally on projects like microbiome-CVD links and bladder cancer diagnostics.
Publications:
Over 100 peer-reviewed articles, with recent focus on microbiome dynamics, cancer progression modeling, and AI-driven diagnostics. Notable works include benchmarking subnetwork analysis methods and developing the SENSE neural network for sequence comparison.
