PEOPLE

We are always looking for highly motivated group members. Please feel free to contact Heejung Shim if you are interested in joining us or having a rotation.

Current Members

The Great Ocean Road, 2014

Heejung Shim: I am a Group Leader at the Melbourne Integrative Genomics (MIG), Chief Investigator at the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Mathematical Analysis of Cellular Systems (MACSYS), and Senior Lecturer (equivalent to Associate Professor in the US) in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Melbourne. I completed my BS in Mathematics (with a double major in Computer Science and Engineering) from the POSTECH, and my PhD in Statistics from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, advised by Prof. Bret Larget. I did a postdoc at the University of Chicago working with Prof. Matthew Stephens. Prior to my current position, I was a tenure track Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics at Purdue University for two years. Currently I maintain an affiliation with Purdue as an Adjunct Assistant Professor.

Dr. Sophie Wharrie, Research Fellow, January 2025-present

Sandeep Santhosh Kumar, PhD student, School of Maths and Stats, March 2022-present (co-supervisor: Dr. Davis McCarthy): A neural-network model for inferring genetic pathways from single-cell data.

Yifan Wang, PhD student, School of Maths and Stats, October 2022-present (co-supervisor: Dr. Yao-ban Chan): Statistical approaches for identification of uORFs (translation regulatory elements) using ribosome profiling data.

Sagrika Chugh, PhD student, School of Maths and Stats, April 2021-present (principal-supervisor: Dr. Davis McCarthy): Bioinformatics tools for single-cell ATAC sequencing data analysis

Aaron Kwok, PhD student, School of Maths and Stats, March 2022-present (principal-supervisor: Dr. Davis McCarthy): Bioinformatics tools for single-cell ATAC sequencing data analysis and scATAC-seq QTLs

Lahiru Sandaruwan, PhD student, School of Maths and Stats, October 2023-present (principal-supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Agus Salim): Statistical methods for spatial transcriptomics data.

Yulin Wu, PhD student, School of Maths and Stats, Feb 2025-present (co-supervisor: Prof. Matt Ritchie): Statistical methods for spatial transcriptomics data; AI-predicted protein structure analysis

Yichen Jiang, MSc student in Data Science, School of Maths and Stats, March 2024-:Machine learning and statistical methods for spatial transcriptomics analysis.

Zeynep March, MSc student in Bioinformatics, July 2024-: Computational Methods for Nanopore data analysis.

Christiaan Van Aardt, School of Maths and Stats, December 2024-: Generalisability of spatial features

Ngoc Minh Vu, Undergraduate student, School of Maths and Stats, Feb 2025-: CRISPR-modified single-cell isoform expression using nanopore RNA sequencing

Former Group Members

PhD students at University of Melbourne
  • Ruqian Lyu, PhD in Mathematics and Statistics, Completed in 2024, Methods for data analysis in single-cell genomics and spatial transcriptomics(principal-supervisor: Dr. Davis McCarthy).
  • Yupei You, PhD in Mathematics and Statistics, Completed in 2024, Development of bioinformatics tools for analysing Oxford Nanopore RNA sequencing data (co-supervisor: Dr. Mike Clark).
  • Hui Li, PhD in Mathematics and Statistics, Completed in 2023, Variational autoencoder and its application in biomedical data analysis (principal-supervisor: Dr. Susan Wei).
  • Qian Feng, PhD in Mathematics and Statistics, Completed in 2023, Analysing malaria var genes with HMMs (principal-supervisor: Dr. Yao-ban Chan).

Masters students at University of Melbourne

  • Steven Nguyen, MSc in Mathematics and Statistics, July 2023-Dec 2024
  • Yulin Wu, MSc in Mathematics and Statistics, July 2023-Dec 2024
  • Ke He, MSc in Computing and Information Systems, March 2024-July 2024
  • Jing Sun, MSc in Bioinformatics, March 2023-July 2024
  • Xinyue Zhao, MSc in Bioinformatics, November 2021-July 2023
  • Brendan Law, MSc in Mathematics and Statistics, July 2018-Dec 2019
  • Denny Shin, MSc in Bioinformatics, July 2018-Dec 2019
  • Jiangrong Ouyang, MSc in Mathematics and Statistics, Feb 2018-May 2019

Undergraduate students at University of Melbourne

Christiaan Van Aardt (Dec 2024 – Feb 2025), Li Fu Zhang (Dec 2024 – Feb 2025), Oliver Cheng (July 2024 – Jan 2025), Yichen Jiang (Dec 2023 – Feb 2024), Keith Howen (March 2023 – June 2023), Patrick Grave (Jan 2023 – Feb 2023), Ke He (January 2023 – Feb 2024), Steven Nguyen (March 2022 – June 2023), Prashansa Singh (Dec 2021 – February 2022), Lachlan Doig (Dec 2021 – February 2022), Yuxin Yan (Dec 2021 – February 2022), Jiayuan Zhu (Jan 2021 – June 2021), Gyu Hwan Park (Jan 2021 – Feb 2021), Christopher Selman (Jan 2020 – Feb 2020), Yong See Foo (Dec 2019 – February 2020)

PhD, Masters, and undergraduate students at Purdue University

  • Patrick Medina: PhD Student in Statistics (principal-supervisor: Prof. Rebecca Doerge), completed in 2017, WAVETDA: Bayesian Statistics, Wavelets and Topological Data Analysis to Assess Statistical Shape.
  • Israa Al-Qassem (2016-2017): MSc Student in CS at Purdue University, Currently PhD Student, Stefan Canzar group at LMU, Germany
  • Yash Kumar Sonthalia (2016-2017): MSc Student in CS at Purdue University, Currently software engineer at Google
  • Nathan Hankey (2016-2017): MSc Student in Statistics at Purdue University, Currently Statistical Analyst at Medpace
  • Sicheng Hao (2016-2017): Undergraduate Student in Statistics at Purdue University, Currently MSc Student in Data Science, Olga Vitek group at Northeastern University