Biography
I am a visiting PhD student in Computer Science from the University of Exeter. My research is primarily about the intersection between genomic Foundation Models (gFMs) and biology.
The alignment of gFMs with wet-lab experiments can be decomposed into five key aspects:
- data > pre-training > post-training > fine-tuning > wet-lab predictions.
My work investigates each of these aspects and aims to improve the alignment of gFMs with real-world experiments - be it training new models from scratch, improving existing methods, or aligning current work to specific biological questions.
The central theme of my PhD relates to the integration of evolutionary information within gFMs, and how this additional context can improve their ability to model and predict biological function.
Some of the key applications of my work include structure prediction, generative RNA design, variant effect prediction, and the identification of functional motifs and their effects on biological processes.