| Biography | |
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 Prof. Xuekui Zhang Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Victoria, Canada |
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| Title: iimi: a workflow for diagnostics of plant viruses using high-throughput genome sequencing data | |
| Abstract:
Plant virus infection causes enormous economic loss, $350 billion worldwide in 2021. We focus on grapevine viruses, which caused Canadian grape growers’ annual loss of over $23 million. Once infected by a virus, the grapevine remains infected for life and must be replaced, since no therapeutic treatments are available. So, diagnosis of virus infection is critical for disease control. Collaborating with researchers from CFIA and other institutes, we are developing a genomic-sequencing-based diagnostic test to detect virus infections of grapevines.
My team's role is to develop method/software to decide if a sample is infected by any virus (from a list of ~1000 viruses) based on its genomic sequencing data. In this talk, I will briefly discuss some research results from this project.
More information about this project can be found at https://www.bloomberg.com/press-releases/2020-10-27/-10m-in-funding-coming-to-bc-researchers-for-improved-grapevine-and-cannabis-management.
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| Biography: Dr. Zhang’s primary appointment is at the University of Victoria, where he was recruited in 2017 as an assistant professor & Canada Research Chair in Bioinformatics and Biostatistics (tier 2). Before that, Dr. Zhang has worked as a Ph.D. statistician at pharmaceutical companies Eli Lilly & Co. and AstraZeneca (2014-2017). Dr. Zhang’s research focus is to develop and apply novel biostatistics methods and software tools to solve real-world problems in medical research. His research interests include Bioinformatics, Biostatistics, Machine learning, Design of clinical trials, and Big data problems in any field. | |
