Location: Public Affairs Building 1246

Frederick Kin Hing Phoa, Research Fellow
Institute of Statistical Science at Academia Sinica (ISSAS), Taiwan

Abstract:

Order-of-addition (OofA) experiments investigate how the sequence in which components are introduced affects the experimental response, and they have attracted considerable attention in the experimental design literature over the past decade. Recently, a new class of designs, known as Complete Consecutive Order Pairing (CCOP) designs, together with their associated analysis methods, has been proposed to provide a cost-efficient framework for conducting OofA experiments and identifying optimal input sequences when components may have multiple levels. These designs substantially reduce experimental cost while retaining strong inferential efficiency. In this talk, we first review the fundamental principles and advantages of this cost-efficient experimental approach. Two real-world examples are then presented to illustrate how CCOP designs can be applied to identify optimal sequences of practical interest. Finally, we discuss recent extensions of the CCOP framework that broaden its applicability to more complex experimental settings.

Bio:

Dr. Frederick Kin Hing Phoa is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Statistical Science, Academia Sinica (ISSAS), where he has served since 2018 following appointments as Assistant Research Fellow (2009–2013) and Associate Research Fellow (2013–2018). He earned dual B.S. degrees in Physical Chemistry (2001) and Applied Mathematics (2002), as well as an Ph.D. in Statistics (2009) from the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Phoa’s research interests include design and analysis of modern experiments, network and big data analysis, nature-inspired metaheuristic optimization, scientometric and bibliographic research, intelligent agriculture, spatiotemporal analysis on environment and policy (seismicity, air pollution, traffic and transportation), and many others. His research excellence has been recognized through numerous prestigious awards, including the Academia Sinica Career Development Award (2014), the Ta-You Wu Memorial Award (2014), the Ministry of Science and Technology Outstanding Research Award (2017), the Outstanding Scholar Award from the Foundation for the Advancement of Outstanding Scholarship (2020), and the Academia Sinica Investigator Award (2023). He has led multiple large-scale research projects, such as two Excellent Young Researcher projects (2013–2016, 2022–2024), an International Cost-Share Exchange Scheme with the Royal Society UK (2016–2018), an Interdisciplinary Intelligence Agriculture Project (2018–2021), the Academia Sinica Thematic Project (2020–2022), the ISSAS Tukey Project (2021–2023), and the Academia Sinica Investigator Project (2023–2027). From 2009 to 2025, Dr. Phoa has published 92 peer-reviewed papers and delivered more than 185 invited talks at international conferences and 125 seminars worldwide.

Location: Public Affairs Building 1246

Fengzhu Sun, Professor of Quantitative and Computational Biology
University of Southern California (USC)

Abstract:

Viruses play important roles in controlling bacterial population size, altering host metabolism, and have broader impacts on the functions of microbial communities, such as human gut, soil, and ocean microbiomes. Metagenomic Hi-C experiments use Hi-C sequencing technologies to link different sequence fragments in microbial communities and have great potentials for reconstructing metagenome assembled genomes (MAG) and mobile-genetic-element (MGE) host interactions. We develop several statistical and computational methods for data normalization, MAG reconstruction and linking MGEs with their hosts. Applications of these tools to metagenomic Hi-C data yield insights into microbial diversity and MGE-host interactions in various microbial environments.

Bio:

Dr. Fengzhu Sun is professor of Quantitative and Computational Biology at the University of Southern California (USC). He is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS), American Statistical Association (ASA), Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS) and International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB). He received the USC Provost’s Mellon Mentoring award in 2012 and USC Dornsife College Senior Raubenheimer award for excellence in research, teaching and service in 2017. He has published over 200 papers and developed several widely used algorithms in computational biology. He has been cited over 17000 times according to google scholar.