The Department of Genetics recently hosted the 2nd Gary D. Stormo Computational & Systems Biology Lecture, featuring keynote speaker Timothy Hughes, PhD, who presented his talk, “Codebook: sequence specificity of human transcription factors.” The lecture, established to honor Dr. Gary Stormo’s pioneering contributions to computational biology, highlights advances at the intersection of computation and systems biology while recognizing emerging talent in the field.
As part of the event, the department proudly announced this year’s Stormo Fellowship in Computational and Systems Biology recipient: Jennie Yao, a PhD student in the labs of Dr. Obi Griffith and Dr. Malachi Griffith. Yao’s work focuses on one of the biggest hurdles in personalized cancer vaccines—accurately predicting which tumor-specific antigens will stimulate a strong and effective immune response.
Jennie brings a strong background to her research, having earned her Bachelor of Science from the University of Toronto in Health & Disease and Statistics, followed by a Master of Science in Biostatistics at Johns Hopkins University. Now at WashU, she is tackling a key challenge in the development of personalized cancer vaccines: identifying which tumor-specific antigens will trigger an effective immune response. Using machine learning, Jennie is developing approaches that integrate both molecular data and patient-specific information, making predictions more clinically relevant. Her work holds great promise for making personalized cancer immunotherapy more effective and scalable.