Polash Ahsan Habib

Kyoto University, Graduate School of medicine · personal gmail · institutional mail

I am enrolled as a doctoral student at Radiation Genetics Lab of Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University.
Although my lab focuses on Genotoxicity and Carcinogenesis, my research focus is including, but not limited to, Cheminformatics/Chemoinformatics, Computational Biology, Medicinal Chemistry, Life Science Informatics and Immunoinformatics.

I have been studying application of Artificial Intelligence for drug discovery and chemical toxicity for my doctoral research.
I often employ computational resources to study kinase inhibitors and to predict toxicity of chemical compounds.
Very often Machine Learning (ML) algorithms are applied in my working strategies to elucidate the Structure Activity Relationship (SAR) of chemical compounds and I am eager to deconvolute the decision making processes by ML.

I am highly knowledgable about NGS data (ChIP-seq/RNA-seq/CAGE data) analysis.
I have analyzed transcriptomics data to evaluate the effect of small molecules to cell line models so that their role in DNA repair dynamics and carcinogenesis is understood. I am familiar with public databases like TCGA, ENCODE etc.

By training I am a molecular biologist. I have experiences with cell biology experiemnts, i.e clonogenic cell survival assays, DNA repair kinetics etc.

As a data vizualization enthuast I often discuss biological data handling and representation with my collleagues.



Experience

Doctoral Student

Joined this lab as a research assistant and later enrolled for doctoral study

Participated Projects:

  • Analyze transcriptomics data to evaluate the effect of androgen to cell line models so that their role in DNA repair dynamics and carcinogenesis is understood
  • Determine genotoxicity of chemical compounds via clonogenic cell survival assay
  • Measure DNA repair dynamic via Immunochemistry (Immunostaining for gH2AX foci and RAD51 foci) and Microscopy
  • Preparation of modified DNA plasmid by editing vector DNA
  • General Molecular Biology Techniques (DNA extraction, PCR etc)
July 2016 - Present (Currently enrolled as Doctoral student)

This is a lab under Department of Molecular Biosciences. Here I started working in the field of cheminformatics

Participated Projects:

  • Implementation of Active Learning
  • Employ Active Learning for matrix metalloproteinases (MMP) inhibitors
  • Active Learning for acute oral toxicity prediction
  • Modeling of CYP450 and Deorphanizing nuclear hormone receptor by Active Learning
  • Visualisation of machine learning decision making process

Lecturer

Acted as lecturer for the undergraduate students of Life Sciences.

Conducted Courses:

  • Introductory Biology
  • Physical Chemistry
  • Biotechnology
  • Bioinformatics

April 2013 - July 2016 (Currently on Study Leave)

Research Associate

Immediately after finishing my MS, I joined the same lab where I did my MS thesis as research associate. I worked in a project to identify novel endophytes of Jute

December 2011 - March 2013

Elective Research Fellow

In this lab I studied for my MS thesis
I studied salt stress responsive pathways of Jute and identified novel Jute miRNA related to salt stress response

August 2010 - December 2011

Education

Doctoral Study

Kyoto University
Graduate School of Medicine
Deapartment of Radiation Genetics
April 2017 - Present (Projected timeline March 2021)

Master of Science (MS)

University of Dhaka

Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

August 2010 - December 2011

Bachelor of Science, B.S. (Honours)

University of Dhaka

Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

April 2006 - August 2010

Skills

Cheminformatics skills
  • Chemogenomic data extraction (ChEMBL/PubChem)
  • Cheminformatics tools (RDKit, OpenEye)
  • QSAR snalysis
  • Machine Learning/Active Learning (RF, SVM, Scikit-learn)

Computational Biology Skill
  • Handling of NGS data (CAGE, ChIP-Seq, RNA-seq)
  • Performing exploratory analysis of tracscriptome to understand gene regulation
  • Data curartion and vizualization from public databases (TCGA, ENCODE, NCBI)

Cell biology skill
  • Human cell line (TK-6 and MCF-7) maintainance
  • Clonogenic cell survival assay
  • Immunochemistry (Immunostaining for gH2AX foci and RAD51 foci) & Microscopy
  • General Molecular Biology Techniques (DNA extraction, PCR etc)

Data analysis skill
  • Data processing (Pandas and Numpy)
  • Data visualization (Matplotlib and Seaborn)

Programming Languages & Tools
  • Capable of writing Reusable and maintainable Python code
  • Bash and Zsh shell
  • R (Basic to Intermediate)

Language Skill
  • Bangla: native speaker
  • English: Professional (IELTS:7/9, TOEIC: 940/950)
  • Japanes (Preliminary)


Publications

Interests

Apart from being a computational chemist/biologist, I enjoy my time with reading blogs, watching movies
I am a coffeeholic, love to try different blends of coffee

As an aspiring chef, I have interest for different cuisins around the world

I enjoy hiking and cycling
While going out for sight seeing I do not forget to bring a camera