Tsinghua Forum Lecture 116

—— Distinguished Lecture by Professor Wing Hung Wong

Time: 10:00-11:30, Tuesday, March 24, 2026

Venue: Reception Hall, Main Building, Tsinghua University

Speaker: Wing Hung Wong, Member of the US National Academy of Sciences

Organizer: Academic Committee of Tsinghua University

Organized by: Department of Automation, Qiuzhen College, and Department of Statistics and Data Science, Tsinghua University

Title:

Software-driven experiment and closed-loop learning in quantitative biology

Abstract:

Progress in quantitative biology requires iterations between experiment and computation. Experimental analysis generates data relevant to the biological system of interest while computational analysis learns predictive or mechanistic models from data. In turn, new experiments are designed and performed to validate or revise the models learned from past experiments. As recent advances in AI have greatly accelerated computational learning and modeling, wet lab experiments have become bottlenecks that limit overall progress.  To overcome these bottlenecks, we are developing a semiconductor-based platform capable of performing general web lab experiments in a software-defined manner. It is expected that this will enable a close-loop learning approach to research in quantitative biology.  In this talk I will present some preliminary results and discuss the future prospect of this approach.  

Introduction of the speaker：

Professor Wing Hung Wong obtained his BS degree in 1976 from the University of California at Berkeley and his Ph.D degree from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1980. He has previously held professorships at the University of Chicago, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, UCLA and Harvard University.In 2004 he joined Staford University where he is currently Professor of the Department of Statistics, Professor of Biomedical Data Science, and holder of the Stephen R. Pierce Family Goldman Sachs Professorship in Science & Human Health. He formerly served as the Chair of the Department of Statistics at Stanford University.

Professor Wong was the winner of two of the highest awards in the field of Statistics, namely the COPSS Presidents’ Award (1993) and the COPSS Distinguished Achievement Award (2021). He was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 2009 and a founding member of the Hong Kong Academy of Sciences in 2015.He served as a core member of the Chair Professor Team at Tsinghua University from 2008 to 2015, and has been a Distinguished Visiting Professor since 2016.