The Department of Software at the College of Information Technology Holds a Detailed Seminar for a Ph.D. Student

Duhaa Fadill Abbas
As part of its ongoing academic and research activities, the Department of Software at the College of Information Technology – University of Babylon, hosted a detailed seminar presented by Ph.D. student Sara Ibrahim Mohammed, under the supervision of Assistant Professor Dr. Sara Zaki Naji. During the seminar, the student delivered a comprehensive presentation on her dissertation titled: “Analysis and Predicting Gene Regulatory Networks (GRN) using Machine Learning”, which addresses the complex challenges associated with predicting novel regulatory interactions within gene regulatory networks.

The researcher explained that the issue of Novel Regulatory Interactions Prediction represents a critical gap in the construction of gene regulatory networks. While most existing models are limited to rediscovering known interactions or enhancing their accuracy, the greater challenge lies in the ability to infer undocumented interactions and subsequently validate them biologically.

She further highlighted that the proposed dissertation introduces an advanced framework that leverages embeddings derived from Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) combined with community attention mechanisms, while integrating data from multiple biological databases such as STRING, RegulonDB, and BioGRID. This integration aims to discover and refine novel regulatory links with significant biological relevance.

The seminar was attended by members of the scientific committee in the department, who engaged in an in-depth discussion of the research project. They provided valuable scientific feedback and constructive recommendations to enhance the quality of the study and ensure the originality of its expected outcomes.