NIH funded bioinformatics project for personalized nutrition research
Location: Nebraska Food for Health Center, FIC 253
Faculty advisor: Yanbin Yin (yyin@unl.edu)
Pay rate: $10/h
Hours: 10 hours minimum per week
Acceptable majors: Food Science, Nutrition, Biochemistry, Biological Science, Microbiology, Plant Biology, Computer Science
Introduction: We (https://bcb.unl.edu/) have an NIH funded bioinformatics project focusing on developing machine learning and AI tools for personalized nutrition. To collect training data for the ML/AI models, we have built an online database called dbCAN-PUL: https://bcb.unl.edu/dbCAN_PUL/home. We need to continuously update the training data (all text data in the form of DNA sequences) by curating published literatures in PubMed (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/).
Responsibilities: The undergraduate research assistant will be supervised by PhD students in our lab to assist the literature curation: fast reading papers to extract needed information, compilation of information in excel spreadsheet, downloading DNA sequence data from NCBI (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/), processing the genomic sequence data in a Linux terminal to generate ML/AI ready text files.
Opportunities and expectations: The undergrad RAs do not need to have prior coding experience, but will have the opportunities to learn if they desire to. The students should enjoy working as a team and reading scientific publications (life science, agriculture, and biomedicine), and can learn all the necessary skills from lab members as the project goes. The students are expected to attend all lab meetings and meet the lab PI weekly.
Requirements: Junior or seniors major in Food Science, Nutrition, Biochemistry, Biological Science, Microbiology, Plant Biology, Computer Science with a minimum GPA 3.0.
More details at: https://yyin@unl.edu