Ming-Ying Leung
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Professor, Mathematical Sciences - Bioinformatics - Computational Science - Border Biomedical Research Center (BBRC)
Director, Bioinformatics and Computational Science Programs
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Dr. Leung has strong interests in research involving mathematical skills and intensive computational techniques, especially on developing efficient algorithms to predict how genomic data are stored, transmitted, and ultimately expressed in life processes. Her research theme is structural bioinformatics on sequence analysis and structure prediction of biomolecules such as DNA, RNA, and proteins. In several ongoing projects funded by NSF, NIH, and USDA, Dr. Leung has proposed mathematical models for RNA analysis, implemented in JAVA, R, and C++ codes, to predict their secondary structures. She has also developed online education modules to introduce bioinformatics research in agricultural science, as part of the curriculum integrated in selected undergraduate and graduate statistics courses, raising the awareness of using mathematics in the effort to combat agricultural diseases and biomedical research problems.