TNJSF JEI Award Winner: Elliott Yoon

Elliott Yoon will be starting his senior year at Tenafly High School. He has been interested in machine learning since middle school and was fortunate to gain hands-on experience in a cancer biology lab one summer. Combining these two interests he worked on a project in the field of computational biology. Specifically, Elliott’s project looked at using machine learning to analyze the molecular structure of hepatocyte growth factor receptor (HGFR or c-MET) to identify potential therapeutic drug candidates in the treatment of cancer.

Elliott noted that one of the challenges faced with his project was the time and computing power needed to both train and run his models on data. While more powerful cloud computing resources are being developed there is still a learning curve with each in order to properly transfer any data to them. Like many of the other JEI Featured Young Scientist Award winners, Elliott stated that one of the most important considerations in presenting his research was being able to simplify his explanations so anyone would be able to understand his work. At the same time he had to also show understanding of the technical details of his project and how they might be used in future studies to build upon his current work.

Congrats to Elliott and his success at TNJSF - we can’t wait to see what he does next!

The material on this page was prepared by Kari Mattison, JEI co-Editor in Chief. Elliott Yoon provided the photo and answers to standard questions which was edited lightly for clarity.