About Me
I am Wei Zhang, an assistant professor at the Department of Computer Science and a core member for the Genomics and Bioinformatics Cluster at Univerity of Central Florida.
I received my Ph.D and M.S. from the Computer Science and Engineering Department at University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. My advisor are
Dr. Rui Kuang and
Dr. Baolin Wu. I did my Bachelor thesis in Computer Science from
Winona State University under
Dr. Mingrui Zhang's supervision. Before joining UCF in 2017, I was a research associate at University of Minnesota for two years.
Research Interests
Computational Biology and Bioinformatics
Machine Learning
Biostatistics
Publications
Peer-reviewed Publication Google Scholar
Wei Zhang, Jeremy Chien, Jeongsik Yong, and Rui Kuang. Network-based Machine Learning and Graph Algorithms for Precision Oncology. npj Precision Oncology, 2017. doi:10.1038/s41698-017-0029-7
Hsin-Sung Yeh, Wei Zhang, Jeongsik Yong. Analyses of alternative polyadenylation: from old school biochemistry to high-throughput technologies. BMB Reports, 2017. doi:10.5483/BMBRep.2017.50.4.019
Lining Liang, Hao Sun, Wei Zhang, Mengdan Zhang, Xiao Yang, Rui Kuang, and Hui Zheng. Meta-Analysis of EMT Datasets Reveals Different Types of EMT. PLoS One, 2016. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0156839
Wei Zhang, Jae-Woong Chang, Lilong Lin, Kay Minn, Baolin Wu, Jeremy Chien, Jeongsik Yong, Hui Zheng, and Rui Kuang. Network-based Isoform Quantification with RNA-Seq Data for Cancer Transcriptome Analysis. PLoS Comput Biol, 2015. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004465 [Download]
Jae-Woong Chang*, Wei Zhang*, Hsin-Sung Yeh, Ebbing de Jong, Semo Jun, Kwan-Hyun Kim, Sun Sik Bae, Kenneth Beckman, TaeHyun Hwang, Kye-Seong Kim, Do-Hyung Kim, Rui Kuang, and Jeongsik Yong. mRNA 3'UTR Shortening is a Molecular Signature of mTORC1 Activation. Nature Communications, 2015. doi:10.1038/ncomms8218 (*Joint first authors)
Wei Zhang, Takayo Ota, Viji Shridhar, Jeremy R Chien, Baolin Wu, and Rui Kuang. Network-based Survival Analysis Reveals Subnetwork Signatures for Predicting Outcomes of Ovarian Cancer Treatment. PLoS Comput Biol, 2013. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002975 [Download]
Jiaqi Yang, Wei Zhang, Baolin Wu. A note on statistical method for genotype calling of high-throughput SNP arrays. Journal of Applied Statistics, 2013. doi:10.1080/02664763.2013.785499
Wei Zhang, Nicholas Johnson, Baolin Wu, and Rui Kuang. Signed Network Propagation for Detecting Differential Gene Expressions and DNA Copy Number Variations. Proc. of ACM Conference on Bioinformatics, Computational Biology and Biomedicine (ACM BCB), Oct 2012. [Paper][Download]
TaeHyun Hwang, Wei Zhang, MaoQiang Xie, Jinfeng Liu, and Rui Kuang. Inferring Disease and Gene Set Associations with Rank Coherence in Networks. Bioinformatics, 27(19): 2692-2699, 2011. doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btr463
Wei Zhang, Baryun Hwang, Baolin Wu, and Rui Kuang. Network propagation models for gene selection. Proc. of IEEE International Workshop on Genomic Signal Processing and Statistics (GENSIPS), Nov 2010. [Paper]
Mingrui Zhang, Wei Zhang, Hugues Sicotte, and Ping Yang. A New Validity Measure for a Correlation-Based Fuzzy C-means Clustering Algorithm. Conference Proc. The 31st Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), Sept 2009. [Paper]
Other manuscript
Raphael Petegrosso*, Wei Zhang*, Zhuliu Li, Yousef Saad, and Rui Kuang. Low-rank Label Propagation for Semi-supervised Learning with 100 Millions Samples. (*Joint first authors) [Paper]
Thesis
Wei Zhang. Computational Analysis of Transcript Interactions and Variants in Cancer. Ph.D Thesis (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities), 2015. [Paper]
Internship
    Millennium: The Takeda Oncology Company
Conference Posters and Presentations
Network-based Transcript Quantification with RNA-Seq Data for Cancer Transcriptome Analysis. International Workshop on Computational Network Biology: Modeling, Analysis, and Control (CNB-MAC), Atlanta, GA, 2015. (Oral)
Network-based Transcript Quantification with RNA-Seq Data. International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB), Boston, MA, 2014. (Poster)
Signed Network Propagation for Detecting Differential Gene Expressions and DNA Copy Number Variations. ACM Conference on Bioinformatics, Computational Biology and Biomedicine (ACM BCB), Orlando, FL, 2012. (Oral)
Network-based Survival Analysis on Ovarian Cancer. International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB), Long Beach, CA, 2012. (Oral)
Teaching Assistant
CSCI 8980 (Fall 2015): Next Generation Computing and Analytics for Cancer Genomics.
CSCI 5461 (Spring 2013 and Spring 2011): Functional Genomics, Systems Biology and Bioinformatics.
CSCI 8980 (Fall 2012): Emerging Bioinformatics Models for NGS and Biological Network Analysis.
CSCI 5481 (Fall 2011): Computational Techniques in Genomics.
Academic Awards
CNB-MAC Student Travel Grant, 2015
Best Poster Award, The 6th Annual Biomedical Informatics and Computational Biology Research Symposium, 2014
ACM-BCB Doctoral Student Travel Grant, 2012
10th Place of NCS/MAA Mathematic Contest in Midwest of America, 2008
4th Place of NCS/MAA Mathematic Contest in Midwest of America, 2007
14th Place of NCS/MAA Mathematic Contest in Midwest of America, 2006