Yu Awarded MIRA Grant
, an associate professor in ÎÞÂëרÇø's School of Computer Science, has received a (MIRA) from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.
The five-year, $2 million award supports researchers with funding designed to provide greater stability and flexibility. The program aims to enhance scientific productivity, distribute resources more widely across the field and increase the likelihood of breakthrough discoveries.
Yu's work in ÎÞÂëרÇø's focuses on string similarity, a central problem in computational biology. This area underpins tasks such as assembling genomes from short sequence reads, identifying evolutionary relationships among species and detecting the transfer of genetic material across bacteria. While finding exact matches between genomes is a well-established process, approximate matching remains a challenge because of mutations and sequencing errors.
Over the next phase of research, Yu plans to extend the theoretical foundations of sketching methods and expand their use to more complex cases, including protein databases. His group will also continue building computational tools to better characterize microbial diversity, with a particular focus on improving methods for analyzing mobile genetic elements.
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