Yue (Joseph) Wang, the Grant A. Dove Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering has accepted an invitation from the Center for Scientific Review at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to serve as a member of the Biodata Management and Analysis (BDMA) Study Section. His initial term begins July 1, 2011 and ends June 30, 2013.

Yue (Joseph) Wang in his office

Members are selected based on their research accomplishments, publication history, and other compelling scientific achievements and honors. Study section responsibilities include ensuring the quality of the NIH peer review process by objectively evaluating grant applications concerning computational methods for acquiring, maintaining, and analyzing biological data. Participation in a study section presents a unique opportunity to contribute to the national biomedical research effort and requires a significant commitment of professional time.

Wang, who is posted at the Advanced Research Institute in Arlington, joined Virginia Tech in 2003 as an associate professor after serving on the faculty at The Catholic University of America. He was promoted to full professor in 2006 and named the Grant Dove Professor in 2009. He is director of the Computational Bioinformatics and Bio-Imaging Laboratory.

Wang has a long and consistent record of scholarly publication and research funding. His major contribution is to machine learning and statistical signal processing in modeling high throughput genomic data for molecular analysis of human diseases, with papers appeared in Nature Reviews, Nature Medicine, Bioinformatics, and IEEE Transactions. His recent work has involved identifying biomarkers that can differentiate between aggressive and slow growing cancers, in cooperation with faculty at the Georgetown University Medical Center and Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. He also has been studying how gene-gene and gene-environment interactions determine disease susceptibility, in cooperation with faculty at the Wake Forest University Medical School and Children’s National Medical Center. He has been principal investigator or co-principal investigator of 20 projects, with personal responsibility for approximately $8.2 million.

Wang is an elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, an honor bestowed on only 2 percent of biomedical researchers, and an ISI Highly Cited Researcher by Thomson Reuters. He was named Alumnus of the Year in Engineering and Information Technology by the University of Maryland Graduate School in 2005 and received the Virginia Tech Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research in 2006.

Wang earned his Ph.D. in EE from the University of Maryland in 1995 and served as a postdoctoral fellow at the Georgetown University School of Medicine. He earned his MSEE and BSCS from Shanghai Jiaotong University in 1987 and 1984, respectively.