celtSTEM Research Collaborative: Graph Neural Nets

A collaborative project between the University of St. Thomas - Houston and Rice University to establish a sustainable initiative to foster computational research, addressing the call to prepare a diverse an inclusive STEM workforce by increasing interest and competencies in undergraduate research. 

This research involves the departments of Mathematics and Computer Science (UST), Biology (UST) and Computer Science (Rice) to address foundational questions in the area of large-scale graph processing using graph neural nets. Relational database technology will be adapted to perform distributed neural computations over huge graphs, which will be applied to tackle two problems in biology: 1) Metagenomic analyses of mosquitoes genetic sequences to discover viruses carried by mosquitos in Houston, and b) protein motif and structural analysis to discover cell functionality.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 2131293. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Carlos Monroy

PI - Computer Science

UST

Maia Larios-Sanz

Co-PI - Biology

UST

Albert Ribes-Zamora

Co-PI - Biology

UST

Chris Jermaine

Co-PI - Computer Science

Rice University

Luay Nakhleh

Co-PI - Computer Science

Rice University

Undergraduate Student Researchers

Maria Bello

Undergraduate Researcher

(1/22 - present)

Carolina Carbajal

Undergraduate Researcher

(5/22 - present)

Jarvin Chavez

Undergraduate Researcher

(1/23 - present)

Nafil Atiq

Undergraduate Researcher

(1/23 - present)

Ramiro Galvan

Undergraduate Researcher

(11/23 - present)

Joseph Troxler

Undergraduate Researcher

(12/23 - present)


Lynne Vu

Undergraduate Researcher

(1/24 - present)

Christopher Tran

Undergraduate Researcher

(5/24 - present)

Emma Luna

Undergraduate Researcher

(5/24 - present)

Je'lin Smith

Undergraduate Researcher

(5/24 - present)

Other faculty collaborators

Huw Ogilvie

Computer Science

Rice University

Amin Shivas

Biology - UST

Charles Thangaraj

Computer Science UST

Past collaborators

Izel Fernandez

Undergraduate Researcher

(1/22 - 5/22)

Samuel Escamilla

Undergraduate Researcher

(1/22 - 12/22)

Fernando Romero

Undergraduate Researcher

(1/22 - 12/22)

Ruben Ruiz

Undergraduate Researcher

(1/22 - 7/23)

Kate Coxic

Undergraduate Researcher

(1/22 - 12/23)

Benjamin Navarro

Undergraduate Researcher

(1/22 - 12/23)

Alix Rieser

Undergraduate Researcher

(1/23- 12/23)

Christopher Lama

Undergraduate Researcher

(10/22 - 5/24)