Leading researcher Dr. Amandeep S. Sidhu to help enhance CSRI’s research capabilities

Miri – 17 July 2012 – The research capabilities of Curtin Sarawak Research Institute (CSRI) at Curtin University, Sarawak Malaysia (Curtin Sarawak), Curtin University’s branch campus in Malaysia, has been greatly enhanced with the appointment of one of the pioneers in the development of protein ontology, Dr. Amandeep S. Sidhu, as a research fellow.

Dr. Sidhu specialises in high-throughput computing, real-time data streams, semantic web, data management, bioinformatics and e-Health. His research work in the fields of bioinformatics, ontologies, data integration, data mining and cloud computing have resulted in over 50 publications that have been cited over 250 times to date. He is also currently an Executive Committee Member of the Asia Pacific Bioinformatics Network (APBioNet).

Over the last seven years, Dr. Sidhu has been leading the development of protein ontology, which has been adopted as a standard and included in the Ontology Repository of the National Centre for Biomedical Ontology at the National Institute of Health in the United States, along with gene and other major biomedical ontologies.

He has also been involved in the development of a HPC+Cloud Facility for Data Intensive Science Projects (in collaboration with Curtin Bentley and Microsoft) and DNA Sequencing in the Cloud.

The latter helped to determine the viability of transmitting data in hybrid computer environments consisting of Azure nodes hosted in Singapore, high-performance computing (HPC) clusters in Curtin Bentley, and genome sequencing machines at the Royal Perth Hospital in Western Australia.

Dr. Sidhu’s appointment brings to three the number of research fellows at CSRI, the campus’ multi-disciplinary research institute that aims to be a world class research institute contributing to research and development in energy and biotechnology in the region.

The further development of Curtin Sarawak’s research through CSRI will greatly enhance its capacity to partner with various groups in research and make it a significant contributor to the sustainable social, environmental, and economic development of Sarawak and the broader national and international community. In recent years, the campus’ research activity has experienced extremely strong growth, both in volume and significance.

For more information on CSRI, including its Early Career Development Fellowships, Senior Research Fellowships and Visiting Fellowships, visit its website at www.curtin.edu.my/csri/index.htm or call +60 85 443 939.

Information on Curtin Sarawak can be found at www.curtin.edu.my or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/CurtinUniversitySarawakMalaysia.