My educational background focus on genome and bioinformatics. Besides majoring in Agronomy, I also have minors in both Information Systems Management and Applied Economics. These seemingly unrelated fields have broadened my horizons and offered me different perspectives on this world. Inspired by these experiences, I applied bioinformatics to investigate the molecular biology of microRNA while studying for my master’s degree in Plant Biology, National Taiwan University. Apart from research projects, the extensive educational resources provided by NTU empowered me with the latest skills and techniques in bioinformatics. The liberal academic atmosphere and thought provoking courses fostered my ability to conduct independent thinking, an important asset when it comes to interdisciplinary research. Despite spending most of my time on research, I maintained cordial relationships with my advisor and lab-mates, as evidenced by my advisor’s recommendation to the Phi Tau Phi Scholastic Honor Society of the Republic of China and my designation as valedictorian of our institute.

I was honored to be accepted by Prof. Chien-Yu Chen’s lab, which bestowed upon my expertise in machine learning. This experience aided me in predicting microRNAs target genes with sequencing data using long short-term memory (LSTM). Since biologists might argue that the machine learning model does not explain the necessary features, our tool combines the biological message with a scoring schema to provide biological evidence.

Under Professor Chen’s recommendation, I joined the Institute of Information Science in Academia Sinica at Prof. Huai-Kuang Tsai’s laboratory. I started by maintaining all the servers and participating in long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) database research, TRIPBASE, and try to analyze extrachromosomal circular DNA (eccDNA) for cancer prediction, calculating the cancer risk score for the healthy person. With both bioinformatics and wet bench experience, I was able to elucidate different molecular mechanisms using predictive biology. My professional goals are to develop algorithms to approach phylogenomics problems and enhance machine learning abilities. In 2022 Fall, I will enroll in United States of America for my Ph.D. degree.