yunhacorn[at]gmail[dot]com

I am a computational biologist researching microbial genome evolution.

I am building artificial intelligence models and tools for interpreting genomic information at Tatta Bio. I believe in open science and the force of collaboration.

Research Interests: ML+Bio, Open science, Scientific software, Metagenomics, Protein-protein interactions, Microbial evolution and ecology

Education

Ph.D. in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, 2020–2024
Dissertation thesis: “Evolution of genomic diversity in natural microbial populations”
M.Sc. in Earth Systems, Stanford University, 2017–2018
B.Sc. in Computer Science, Stanford University, 2014–2018

Publications

For the most up to date list, please see my Google Scholar.

Andre Cornman, Jacob West-Roberts, Antonio P Camargo, Simon Roux, Martin Beracochea, Milot Mirdita, Sergey Ovchinnikov, Yunha Hwang , “The OMG dataset: An Open MetaGenomic corpus for mixed-modality genomic language modeling”, BioRxiv (2024)

Jacob West-Roberts, Joshua Kravitz, Nishant Jha, Andre Cornman, Yunha Hwang “Diverse Genomic Embedding Benchmark for functional evaluation across the tree of life”, BioRxiv, (2024)

Yunha Hwang, Andre Cornman, Elizabeth Kellogg, Sergey Ovchinnikov, Peter Girguis “Genomic language model predicts protein co-regulation and function” Nature Communications, (2024)

Yunha Hwang, Simon Roux, Clement Coclet, Sebastian Krause, Peter Girguis “Viruses interact with hosts that span distantly related microbial domains in dense hydrothermal mats.” Nature Microbiology, (2023)

Yunha Hwang, Dirk schulze-Makuch, Felix Arens, Johan Saenz, Panagiotis Adam, Christof Sager, Till Bornemann, Weishu Zhao, Ying Zhang, Alessandro Airo, Michael Schloter, Alexander Probst “Leave no stone unturned: Individually adapted xerotolerant Thaumarchaeota sheltered below the boulders of the Atacama Desert hyperarid core” Microbiome, (2021)

Nishant Jha, Joshua Kravitz, Jacob West-Roberts, Antonio Camargo, Simon Roux, Yunha Hwang, “Gaia: A Context-Aware Sequence Search and Discovery Tool for Microbial Proteins”, BioRxiv (2024)

Try out Gaia at https://gaia.tatta.bio/

Yunha Hwang, Janina Rahlff, Dirk Schulze-Makuch, Michael Schloter, Alexander Probst “Diverse viruses carrying genes for microbial extremotolerance in the Atacama Desert hyperarid soil” mSystems, (2021)

Life and work away from my laptop

  • Soil sampling

    Atacama fieldwork, Chile (2019)

  • R/V Revelle Van

    Sampling in the Guaymas Basin, Mexico (2021)

  • occasional wet labwork!

    Girguis lab (2022)

  • Cruise fieldwork

    with AUV Sentry aboard R/V Revelle (2021)

  • arctic glaciers

    Arctic fieldwork, Svalbard (2016)

  • Soil sampling

    Atacama fieldwork, Chile (2019)

  • halophiles

    Boulby Underground Laboratory, UK (2019)

  • ISME18, Lausanne, Switzerland (2022)

    ISME18, Lausanne, Switzerland (2022)