Computation meets biology: BracU hosts interdisciplinary workshop

BracU hosted a workshop and symposium on interdisciplinary computational biology from January 5th to 10th. Professor Tibra Ali (Associate Dean of Research, SDS) organized the event with support from Geval and Biggan Chinta. During the first three days, a workshop focused on computational structural biology and the application of AI/ML in the field was held. Dr. Amitava Roy (Affiliate Professor, University of Montana, USA) and Dr. Swakkhar Shatabda (Professor, CSE) conducted the workshop. Professor Roy is a structural computational biologist and the founder and CEO of Geval, a US- based startup specializing in precision and personalized medicine. He completed his doctoral studies at Purdue University and postdoctoral fellowship at Weill Medical College, Cornell University and Purdue University in the USA. Complementing the workshop, Professor Shatabda contributed his expertise in data science and bioinformatics.

Following this, a one-day training session on AlphaFold, a protein structure-prediction AI program developed by Google DeepMind, was held. Participants gained hands-on experience with protein folding simulations using AlphaFold. The event concluded with a special seminar titled “Computation Meets Biology” on January 10th. Commenting on the success of the event, Professor Shatabda said, “This workshop marks only a beginning. Meaningful progress in computational biology requires sustained interdisciplinary engagement, and we need many more such initiatives to prepare students for the complex scientific challenges ahead through follow-up courses, joint projects, and long-term collaborations between biology and computer science.”

Students and researchers from various institutions participated in the workshop. As Dr. Roy shares, “Curiosity is the cornerstone of any scientific field; shared curiosity is the cornerstone of an interdisciplinary field. To develop shared curiosity, practitioners of science from different fields should be able to understand each other’s language. This workshop was divided equally between participants from CS/data Science and non-CS/Data science majors. I am happy to see that, over the course of the workshop, new friendships developed between practitioners from these two groups, which will help them understand each other’s language and, ultimately, join forces to solve problems using interdisciplinary approaches.” A participant, Rakib Muhammad Saki (Senior, MNS) shared his experience, “Dr. Amitava Roy always tried to focus his narrative on the scientific journey of solving problems instead of the little details of biology and hence managed to keep non-biology majors, such as myself, engaged. Dr. Shatabda’s ML/AI review was very informative. And the compbio stories of Bangladesh in the symposium on the last day were interesting too. Talking to people doing research in other areas was also interesting.”