HAOYANG (HERBERT) YAO
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2 | 613-583-2676 | herbert.yao@ubc.ca

EDUCATIONon-going

05/2023

Doctor of Philosophy: Genome Science and Technology
The University of British Columbia － Vancouver, BC• Thesis: Universal Gene Regulatory Network Inference• Supervisor: Prof. Nozomu Yachie• Four Year Doctoral Fellowship (4YF) recipient
Master of Applied Science: Chemical Engineering
Queen's University － Kingston, ON• Thesis: Applications of protein-constrained genome-scale modelling for strain
design and context-specific metabolic prototyping in synthetic biology• Supervisor: Prof. Laurence Yang
• GPA: 4.23/4.3• 2022-23 R.S McLaughlin Fellowship recipient

04/2021

Bachelor of Applied Science: Chemical Engineering
Queen's University － Kingston, ON• Thesis: Genome-scale metabolic model of Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilm• Supervisor: Prof. Laurence Yang
• GPA: 3.52/4.3 (Graduation with First Class Honors)• Dean's Honor List recipient (2018, 2020, 2021)

RESEARCH INTERESTS• Computational biology• Systems biology and genome-scale modelling (GEM)• Machine learning (ML) in biological systems• Omics data analysis• Optimization and system controlEXPERIENCE
05/2021 to 05/2023 MASc Student
Queen's University － Kingston, ON• Investigated Chlamydomonas reinhardtii lipid overproduction using GEM
Þ Proposed and completed the projectÞ Suggested and published a novel GEM workflow on MATLAB• Unveiling Pseudomonas aeruginosa antimicrobial resistance (AMR)mechanism by ML and GEM with wet-lab validation (in-progress)
Þ Scoping to reduce pathogenic P. aeruginosa AMR in infection treatmentsÞ Collaborating with partners to obtain wet-lab trainings and results• Simulating commercially feasible plastic biodegradation methods (in-progress)
Þ Collaborating with lab members to build microbial and financial models
05/2020 to 09/2020 Undergraduate Research Assistant
Queen's University － Kingston, ON• Completed on a case study of APRILE by suggesting the mechanisms behindcertain polypharmacy reverse effects• Contributed to APRILE development
09/2018 to 04/2023 Teaching Assistantship
Queen's University － Kingston, ON• APSC 143: Introduction to Computing Programming for Engineers (marking)• CHEE 330: Heat and Mass Transfer (tutorial and marking)• CHEE 340: Biomedical Engineering (tutorial and marking)

PUBLICATIONSYao, H., Dahal, S., & Yang, L. (2023). Novel context-specific genome-scalemodelling explores the potential of triacylglycerol production by Chlamydomonas
reinhardtii. Microbial Cell Factories, 22(1), 1-16.
Xu, H., Sang, S., Yao, H., Herghelegiu, A. I., Lu, H., Yurkovich, J. T., & Yang, L.
(2021). APRILE: Exploring the Molecular Mechanisms of Drug Side Effects with
Explainable Graph Neural Networks. bioRxiv, 2021-07. (Preprint)

CONFERENCE
2022

RECOMB/ISCB Conference on Regulatory & Systems Genomics (Poster)

MEMBERSHIP
2022 – 2024Member, International Society for Computational Biology

SKILLS
Programming:• Machine learning in Python• Data analysis in MATLAB, Python, and R using common packages• Source control through Git• Other programming languages: C, C++, Java
• Using Windows, Mac, and Linus OS
Engineering and Math: process control, numerical methods, complex analysis, linear
algebra, calculus
Lab: undergraduate-level lab training in chemistry and biology
Language: English (full professional), Chinese (native), Japanese (limited)