Sep. 5, 2025

Alina Rohulia

I am a PhD student in Bioinformatics with a Bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Missouri. My main scientific interest is autism spectrum disorder and I am studying how data science and artificial intelligence can be used to find reasons, trends, and outcomes in autistic population.

Sep. 5, 2025

Nathan Bresette

Hello, my name is Nathan Bresette, and I began my PhD in Informatics in 2025, specializing in bioinformatics with a certificate in data science. My research focuses on utilizing Alzheimer’s multi-omics data to identify biomarkers that contribute to the disease and repurposing FDA-approved drugs to target these biomarkers, under the guidance of Dr. Ai-Ling Lin. I also do research with Dr. Changyu Sun to develop novel strategies for rapid MRI acquisition and accurate image reconstruction.

June 18, 2025

Joe Emanuel

Joe Emanuel is a PhD Student in Informatics. His research interests include geospatial data privacy, differential privacy, and cybersecurity.

June 18, 2025

Zaynab Shakkour

I am a PhD student in Bioinformatics with a Master’s degree in Neuroscience from the University of Missouri. My scientific interests center on leveraging cutting-edge tools in bioinformatics and AI to enhance personalized diagnoses and improve treatment strategies. My current research focuses on autism and rare diseases, combining neurogenomics and informatics to uncover genetic underpinnings that enable subgroup discovery and advance precision medicine through drug repurposing. I am excited to serve as Secretary of the Graduate Student Organization and look forward to helping build a more connected and supportive student community!

June 18, 2025

Maryam Seifaddini

I’m Maryam, a researcher focused on subgroup discovery and pattern mining in health data. My work centers on developing innovative, AI-driven methods to integrate and extract meaningful insights from diverse omics datasets.

July 3, 2024

Erfan Zareei

Erfan Zareei is a PhD student at the University of Missouri, Columbia, where he is a member of Dr. Chi-Ren Shyu’s research team. He completed his Bachelor’s degree at the Sharif University in Iran and his Master’s at the University of Missouri, Columbia. In his current role, Erfan is engaged in research focusing on the application of LLM in Geospatial Informatics. His previous research includes studying virus spread in wetlands, analyzing fish behavior in stagnant water, quantifying microplastic pollution in aquatic ecosystems, and simulating particle cloud behavior in fluids with image processing and CFD simulation. With a passion for…

May 10, 2024

Timoteo Kelly

Timoteo Kelly is a National Science Foundation CyberCorps Scholar currently affiliated with the Mizzou Scalable Data Science Lab, where he has been contributing to research in data security and the Internet of Medical Things. Prior to this, he conducted research in mobile health and data science at Nova Southeastern University’s Department of Decision Sciences where he obtained a master’s degree in health informatics. Timoteo is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Informatics with an emphasis in the Internet of Medical Things and data security at the University of Missouri-Columbia. 

Dec. 14, 2023

Amir Habibdoust Lafmajani

I’m Amir, a PhD student in Health Informatics, and I have a background in econometrics. I love digging into the world of causality and counterfactual world. What really sparks my interest is exploring what could have happened – the “what-if” scenarios. Originally coming from econometrics, I found my way into health data science, and it feels like I’ve found my sweet spot. My research focus in combining causal inference and machine learning, with a special focus on understanding the ‘what if’ situations in health science, clinical trial, and cost-effectiveness of intervention. As I work through my PhD, I’m…

Dec. 13, 2023

Philip Amewudah

While unstructured text data seems to be challenging to analyze, they have shown to be very rich sources of clinical health information. My research area focuses on using free text data from text messages to learn domain ontology for the standardization of Nursing home care under the 4Ms (what Matters, Mentation, Medication, Mobility) framework, using pre-trained word/sentence embeddings.