PhD Thesis Proposal - Chenwei Zhang

Name: Chenwei Zhang

Date: Nov 4, 2024

Time: 3PM

Location: ICCS X836

Supervisor: Anne Condon

Title: Applications of Deep Generative Models in DNA Reaction Kinetics and Cryogenic Electron Microscopy

Abstract:

Over the past few years, deep generative models (DGMs) have achieved remarkable success across various domains, including image, video, and natural language processing, and have become increasingly popular in biology.

In this proposal, we employ DGMs to solve two challenging biological problems.  The first challenge is to comprehend the mechanisms that determine DNA reaction kinetics using variational autoencodes (VAEs) with biophysical constraints. The second challenge is to leverage diffusion models to enhance the visibility and clarity of structural details in low-resolution cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) 3D density maps, thereby constructing more accurate protein structures