About Me
Who I Am?
Hi! I am Huy. I am a 1st-year 2nd-year 3rd-year PhD student in Computer Science at Auburn University, where I work in the Data Science and Engineering Lab under the supervision of Prof. Wei-Shinn (Jeff) Ku.
I have also been fortunate to receive mentorship at Auburn from Dr. Phi Hung Bya, Dr. Zongliang (Wells) Yue, Prof. Hao Chen, and Prof. Jiaqi (Jack) Wang.
Before starting my PhD, I trained as a Pharmacist in Vietnam and spent two rewarding years as a Research Scientist at VinBigData, where I was supervised by Prof. Duc-Hau Le and Dr. Nam S. Vo.
During this time, I was a core member of the VN1K project, the largest population genomics initiative in Vietnam, which aimed to build a comprehensive catalog of genomic variants in the Vietnamese population.
I'm always open to collaborations, discussions, and new opportunities. Feel free to reach out if you're interested in my research or would like to discuss potential projects.
Research: My primary research focuses on:
1. Computational Biology. My work spans multi-omics studies integrating genomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, and proteomics. This includes bulk, single-cell, and spatially resolved analyses, pathway analysis, variant calling (both germline and somatic), genome-wide association studies (GWAS), and polygenic risk scores (PRS).
2. Computational Healthcare Informatics. I develop and apply data-driven methods for learning from heterogeneous clinical and biological data to support decision-making in medicine and public health.
I also address core AI challenges raised by these problems, including multi-modal modeling, agentic reasoning, uncertainty quantification, federated and collaborative learning, etc.
What's new:
- 2026.07: 🎉 My second publication in Nature Communications, on VN1K is a pangenome-informed multi-omics and phenomics resource for the Vietnamese population.
- 2026.07: Invited to serve as an external reviewer for ICDM 2026.
- 2026.07: Invited to serve as a reviewer for Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence.
- 2026.07: Released nano-CellFM, the third single-cell foundation model in nano-scFMs. See the PR here.
- 2026.07: Many thanks to Kaggle for supporting my proposal, which is part of PAG-Agent, with additional computing resources through the Benchmarks Resource Grant Program under the Kaggle Research Grant Program!
- 2026.06: Released nano-Geneformer, the second single-cell foundation model in nano-scFMs. See the PR here. More lightweight single-cell foundation models are on the way.
- 2026.06: I launched my personal project nano-scFMs, starting with nano-scBERT. The project aims to build lightweight, faithful reimplementations of single-cell foundation models to better understand their architectures, compare design choices, and provide clean reference implementations for learning and experimentation. See the PR here.
- 2026.06.09: 🤩 I finally got to see Messi play with my own eyes 👀 in the 🇦🇷 Argentina vs. 🇮🇸 Iceland friendly (Argentina won 3-0, of course 😌). It was truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience that I had only ever dreamed of. Thanks to the USA in general and Auburn in particular for making it come true 🫡
- 2026.06: Invited to serve as a reviewer for Frontiers in Bioinformatics.
- 2026.05: Joined Auburn University's Engineering Online and Continuing Education (EOL) as a Graduate Transcription Assistant, supporting graduate-level online courses. Currently working with cloud computing course materials and learning more about large-scale computing systems along the way.
- 2026.05: Migrated Platypus (a fast, local de novo assembly-based variant caller) from Python 2 to Python 3 and improved installation with Docker support. See the PR here.
- 2026.05: Contributing my first open-source fix to Clair3 (a deep learning-based long-read variant caller), resolving compilation issues with modern GCC compilers.
- 2026.05: Awarded the 🏆 Gold Reviewer Award (top 25% of reviewers) at ICML 2026 for outstanding review quality based on area chair evaluations.
- 2026.05: 🎉 I reached the 100-citation milestone on Google Scholar, nearly six years after my first first-author publication, marking another meaningful milestone in my journey as a computational biologist.
- 2026.04: Invited to serve as a reviewer for Frontiers in Bioinformatics.
- 2026.04: 🎉 I am honored to be among three graduate students nominated university-wide by the AU Graduate School for the 2026 Google PhD Fellowship.
- 2026.04: Our work on Wastewater intelligence predicts the emergence of clinically-relevant and drug-resistant Candidozyma auris at healthcare facilities was highlighted in a Bioengineer.org feature article.
- 2026.04: 🎉 My first co-first-author publication in Nature Communications, on Wastewater intelligence predicts the emergence of clinically-relevant and drug-resistant Candidozyma auris at healthcare facilities.
- 2026.04: Our work, VN1K, was recently featured in a discussion by Giang Nguyen (VAST researcher) on How can a country build its own 1000 Genomes Project?
- 2026.03: Invited to serve as a reviewer for NeurIPS 2026.
- 2026.03: Our new work, FedWQ-CP, was featured in the latest newsletter by Martin Rodek (Distinguished Data Engineer at Capital One).
- 2026.02: Invited to serve as a reviewer for ICML 2026.
- 2025.08: Served as Graduate Teaching Assistant for AU COMP 1220 and COMP 1230.
- 2025.08: Participated in the two-day Cell Maps for AI CodeFest hackathon at UAB.
- 2025.06: The findings from VN1K were clearly summarized and discussed here.
- 2024.12: Excited to work with Prof. Duc-Hau Le at Bioinformatics Lab (HUST, Hanoi) this winter!
- 2024.08: Served as Graduate Teaching Assistant for AU COMP 1220 and COMP 1230.
- 2023.08: Appointed as a Graduate Research Assistant, working with Phi Hung Bya and Prof. Tin Nguyen on projects including a review of pathway analysis for metabolomics, wastewater intelligence systems for Candida auris, T2D polygenic risk score prediction, and a review of LLMs in the biomedical domain.
- 2023.08: Began my PhD in Computer Science at Auburn University.
- 2022.03: Invited to serve as a reviewer for Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology.
- 2021.12: Finally, the VN1K Project, which sequenced 1,000 Vietnamese genomes, is completed. See how international experts talked about it in here.
- 2021.10: 🎉 Published my first co-corresponding-author paper in Frontiers in Oncology, on re-identification of patient subgroups in uveal melanoma, where I co-mentored Thi Hai Yen Nguyen. Congrats to Yen!
- 2020.10: 🎉 Yayyy!!! Published my first first-author paper, marking an important milestone in my journey to becoming a computational biologist. Sincere thanks to Prof. Duc-Hau Le for his guidance and support.
- 2020.10: Promoted to Research Scientist at Vingroup Big Data Institute.
- 2020.08: Graduated from Dainam University 🎉 Yayyy I took the first steps toward becoming a pharmacist!
- 2020.03: Joined Vingroup Big Data Institute as a Research Intern and a member of the biggest genome project in Vietnam (VN1K).
- 2019.04: 🏆 Proudly received an Honorable Mention in Linear Algebra at the 27th Mathematics Olympiad for Students in Nha Trang University, Khanh Hoa province.
- 2017.12: Started to work with Prof. Duc-Hau Le at TLU, Hanoi as a Visiting Student.