The Computational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC) is  pleased to announce that Professor Xin Gao has assumed the position of Interim Director and Professor Robert Hoehndorf as Interim Associate Director of the CBRC. Both professors assumed their roles on September 15, 2022.

In this candid interview, Ph.D. candidate Dalal M Alkuraythi from King Saud University talks about her scientific interests, current research work and its impact on food safety management in the Kingdom.

CBRC's Alumni Dr. Tanvir Alam recently received The Early Career Researcher Award from Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), Doha on its first annual Research Day on September 7, 2022. Research Day was an opportunity for HBKU to recognize and honor the accomplishments of faculty and scientists, early-career researchers, and students, with the presentation of research awards in different categories.

At the 2022 UN Oceans Conference, Lisbon, Portugal, members of the governing bodies of he Coral Research and Development Accelerator Platform (CORDAP) met to advance the program of the platform. This comes at a critical time for corals, which are facing widespread destruction due to the impacts of human-induced climate change along with direct human pressures. KAUST serves as CORDAP’s central node, supporting CORDAP operations.

Saudi Food & Drug Authority (SFDA) delegation visited CBRC last week to discuss collaborative research activities in the areas of food and drugs. SFDA is an authority that regulates and monitors safety in food, drugs and medical devices. SFDA is already working with various other research groups in KAUST. And this will be the first of many collaborations to come with the authority.

PhD Student Sarah M Alghamdi from the Bio-Ontology Research Group (BORG) explains how phenotype ontologies help in identifying disease genes through phenotype comparison. Her research was picked as a highlight in the July 2022 issue of Disease Models and Mechanisms Journal.

The Computational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC) in collaboration with Saudi Aramco, recently hosted Internship students from different universities to work on biotechnological application of microbes in Oil industry.

Raquel Peixoto's team propose a science-based framework, outlining a path from laboratory bench to pilot and large-scale applications of microbiomes, to save threatened ecosystems.

CBRC congratulates Maha Thafar on successfully completing her Ph.D. in Computer Science. She defended her thesis on "Drug Repositioning through the Development of Diverse Computational Methods using Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Graph Mining" on the 30th of June.

On behalf of CBRC, we would like to announce the departure of our valued team member Dr. Katsuhiko Mineta after 8 years of service. Dr. Mineta is a Principal Research Scientist at the Comparative Genomics and Genetics Lab. Dr. Mineta has been working in the field of bioinformatics and -omics studies from both experimental and computational approaches. His research backgrounds are agricultural chemistry and genetics, and his research interests are in the following research field and related topics; Environmental bioinformatics, Population Genomics, Metagenomics, Functional genomics and transcriptomics, biological sensors, Evolution of brain, Evolution of the sensory system.

CBRC Congratulates Dr. Takashi Gojobori, Distinguished Professor of Bioscience at KAUST and Acting director of the Computational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC) on being elected as a Fellow of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB).

We are pleased to welcome Professor Alexandre Soares Rosado, Professor Ivan Viola, Associate Professor Raquel Pexioto and Assistant Professor Di Wang as new members of CBRC effective 1st of July 2022. We are thrilled to have you and look forward to collaborating with you.

CBRC congratulates Sultan Ahmed and Magbubah Essack on completing 10 years of service. And Faroug Tifratene and Adil Salhi on completing 5 years of service.