ITTA BENA, Miss.— Mississippi Valley State University (MVSU) graduate students in the Master of Science in Bioinformatics program made a strong impression at the 21st Annual Meeting of the MidSouth Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Society (MCBIOS), held March 27–29, 2025, at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.
With the theme “Data-Driven Discovery: Harnessing the Power of AI to Transform Health,” the MCBIOS conference welcomed more than 70 presenters and hosted over 80 poster sessions focused on the convergence of artificial intelligence, genomics, and biomedical data science.
Three MVSU students presented original research developed under the mentorship of Dr. Victor M. Bii and Dr. Charles Bland, faculty members in the Department of Natural Sciences and Environmental Health.
Graduate student Deepa Reghu received a $200 award for her dual-format presentation, “A Platform for Developing AI-Powered Smartphone Medical Applications.” Her research introduced an open-source platform designed to simplify the development of mobile medical apps using Flutter and the ChatGPT API, offering diagnostic tools through conversational AI.
Ricaria Gordon presented both a poster and an oral presentation on “Automated Weed Detection of Rumex Species using Convolutional Neural Network,” which focused on improving agricultural efficiency through AI-powered weed detection models.
Anshuman Jaiswal shared his work on “Smartwatch-Based Detection of Parkinson’s Disease (PD) Using Motion Sensor Data and Machine Learning.” His research showcased the potential of using non-invasive, wearable technology combined with machine learning models such as Random Forest, SVM, and KNN for early PD detection.
The conference highlighted the computational biology community's innovative spirit and collaborative nature. MVSU’s participation further solidifies the university’s commitment to advancing healthcare technology and producing leaders in the field of bioinformatics.
