Graduate assistantships are available at the Bioinformatics Toolsmith Laboratory headed by Dr. Hani Z. Girgis at the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department of Texas A&M University- Kingsville (TAMUK).
About the Principal Investigator (PI): Dr. Girgis has been an Assistant Professor at TAMUK since October 2019. Prior to joining TAMUK, Dr. Girgis was an Assistant Professor at the University of Tulsa. He did his postdoctoral training at the National Institutes of Health and Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Girgis holds a doctoral and a master’s degrees in computer science from the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York. His undergraduate majors at the University at Buffalo are biology and computer science. Dr. Girgis’ areas of expertise are bioinformatics (computational genomics and sequence analysis), machine learning, and software development. The focus of the Bioinformatics Toolsmith laboratory is designing intelligent software for analyzing genomic data ( github.com/BioinformaticsToolsmith ). The lab members have published several articles in national and international journals and conferences ( scholar.google.com/citations?user=NZbiV5YAAAAJ&hl=en ).
Assistantship details:
• Each assistantship includes a stipend for one year initially,
• These assistantships may be extended for another year based on the availability of funds,
• Awardees may get tuition waiver or may qualify for in-state tuition,
• Some assistantships may include medical insurance, and
• The assistantships may be applied towards master’s or doctoral degrees.
Responsibilities: An awardee will:
• Work 20 hours per week during semesters and full-time during breaks,
• Design and implement intelligent software for analyzing genomic data,
• Conduct computational experiments, and
• Write scientific manuscripts.
Required skills: Candidates who meet the following criteria are strongly encouraged to apply:
• Strong interest in conducting research in bioinformatics — computational genomics in particular,
• Desire to pursue graduate studies at the doctoral level after completing a master’s degree,
• Ability to program in Python and/or C++,
• Basic knowledge of molecular biology,
• Minimum GPA of 3.5, and
• Willingness to take additional courses in computer science and bioinformatics as suggested by the PI.
Desired skills: It is desired (optional, will be learned during the program) that an applicant has:
• Introductory course work in bioinformatics, data structures & algorithms, machine learning, and
molecular biology; and
• Good technical writing skills.
Please email (hani.girgis@tamuk.edu) the following documents as one PDF file:
• A one-page resume, and
• A one-page statement of purpose including the reasons for your interest in this assistantship in particular.