Tag: conference > Queen's School of Computing

BMIF Student Receives Sponsorship to Attend the Crohn’s & Colitis Congress

Peyton Briand Presenting Conference Poster

With the support of our generous donors, QSC was able to sponsor our Master’s in Biomedical Informatics student Peyton Briand to attend the Crohn’s & Colitis Congress. The conference took place at the Bellagio in Las Vegas on January 25–27.

We asked Peyton about her experience presenting a poster at this prestigious event.

What drew you to study Biomedical Informatics?

I have a background in life sciences but wanted to shift gears following my undergrad and find a passion for research. When I discovered the BMIF program at Queen’s, I knew it was one that would help me find my place in research. I had a steep learning curve for the computing aspect of this degree, but the work I am doing with current clinical data is very exciting! I am working with Dr. Daniel Mulder at the Kingston Health Sciences Centre in the Gastrointestinal Disease Research Unit looking for undiscovered patterns in white blood cells of patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

Could you tell us a few words about your poster presentation in Las Vegas?

The title of my poster is “Routinely collected bloodwork reveals immune cell patterns that reflect disease activity in patients with inflammatory bowel disease”.

My project is using data from a local cohort of KHSC patients with IBD. The project is investigating white blood cell counts following routine blood collection. There is a subset called “the differential” that is commonly reported, yet its use is not well defined. By using machine learning techniques, we hope to build a better understanding of the connection between this subset and disease activity, and provide insight to a patient’s clinical presentation without requiring more invasive testing, like the endoscopy.

How did you find out about the Crohn’s & Colitis Congress and what made you decide to attend?

My supervisor, Dr. Mulder, encouraged me to submit an abstract to this conference and share our lab’s work and use of bioinformatics.

I received $700 from QSC to attend this event which covered majority of my travel expenses. While I was very excited to attend a conference and gain such invaluable experience and insight from others studying IBD, finances are always something I need to consider as a student. The sponsorship I received from the QSC relieved much anxiety regarding the expenses of this opportunity and made the decision to attend much easier to make!

How was your experience? Do you feel inspired to continue work in this field?

I had a great time at the Crohn’s and Colitis Congress! The congress did an excellent job hosting, and I was able to learn so much from experts in the field and make connections with research groups across North America. As a poster presenter, I was able to gain feedback from others with and without experience in computing to help me develop future directions for this project. I hope to continue developing models to learn more about our patients and improve the clinical experiences they have by using bioinformatic tools!

“GeneDRAGNN” Wins Best Student Paper Award at the IEEE CIBCB 2022 Conference

The Team Receiving the Best Student Paper Award at the IEEE CIBCB Conference

David Huang, a 4^th year Biomedical Computing student, was part of the Queen’s team to win the “Best Student Paper” award at the IEEE CIBCB 2022 conference in Ottawa this August. The winning paper, titled geneDRAGNN: Gene Disease Prioritization using Graph Neural Networks, can be found in the IEEE Xplore journal. The project aims to contribute to the world of human genetics research by using machine learning to discover potential genes related to specific diseases. The study focuses on using graph neural networks to detect gene-disease associations with lung adenocarcinoma.

David was representing Queen’s School of Computing at the conference alongside his teammates from all over Queen’s: Awni Altabaa (Mathematics), Hani Khatib (Commerce), Ciaran Byles-Ho (Engineering Physics), and Fabian Sosa (Electrical Engineering), all under the supervision of QSC’s Professor Ting Hu.

The group got together through their involvement with the Queen’s University Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Disruptive Technologies group, or QMIND.

QMIND is Canada’s largest student-run organization with over 200 members. The students in QMIND design teams solve real-world problems through the use of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and various other disruptive technologies. David Huang has been part of QMIND since 2019, first as Design Team Member, and later as Project Manager, and then a Director of Design.

“QMIND was where I first dipped my toes into the field of artificial intelligence and research, and it was how my teammates and I connected,” David says.

Their QMIND undergraduate research team first presented geneDRAGNN in the UofT AI Project X competition, where the team won first place. As the team’s cheerleader and mentor, Dr. Hu encouraged the group to take the paper further and to present at the IEEE conference. David says that presenting at the IEEE CIBCB 2022 was nerve wracking, but rewarding:

“We have presented at student-run conferences through QMIND before, but these conferences were online because of the pandemic. The IEEE conference was our first experience presenting in person, and at a prestigious international conference with actual researchers presenting. We were nervous and stayed up the night before rehearsing our presentation, preparing answers to any potential questions the panel might ask us. In the end, it turned out great. This was many of our teams’ first ever published research paper and I am thrilled that our team has received the Best Student Paper award for it.”

When asked about what helped David and his team accomplish this milestone, David credited most of their success to Professor Hu’s mentorship.

Presenting the Paper at the IEEE CIBCB 2022 Conference

“Dr. Hu helped guide our team in the right direction and encouraged us to reflect on why we made the decisions we did. Dr Hu even involved one of her PhD students, Ryan Zhou, to support us and provide his perspective on our research and help us problem-solve. Dr. Hu pushed us towards pursuing publication and encouraged us to continue taking the project further after we won at the UofT AI competition. I am grateful to Dr. Hu for showing such confidence in our abilities and in what we had to offer as a team.”

In addition to his work with QMIND, David has spent the past year and a half doing an internship with the Centre for Advanced Computing at Queen’s University, a unit that supports researchers at Queens through hardware and software solutions. David says that seeing research translated into actual products has made him appreciate the power of institutions, like the Centre for Advanced Computing, in enabling end-to-end research.

“I worked directly with researchers from KHSC to develop a dashboard that tracked COVID-19 cases across Eastern Ontario. This dashboard helped inform the response to the COVID-19 pandemic and guide public health policy. I am amazed at the multidisciplinary effort that is required to develop solutions in the healthcare space.”