About Me
Welcome to my website! I’m Xin Ma, a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Florida, with research involvement in bioinformatics at the Center for Advanced Spatial Biomolecule Research(CASBR). I’m fortunate to be advised by Dr. Li Chen and Dr. Ramon C Sun. Before my Ph.D. journey, I earned a Master of Science in Statistics from George Washington University with 2-year Dean’s Fellowship and completed my Bachelor’s degree in Actuarial Science at the Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, China.
My research interests revolve around leveraging statistical learning and deep learning methods to explore various domains within biostatistics. This includes spatial multi-omics (Spatial Transcriptomic and Spatial Metabolomics), genomics (Single-cell sequence data), genetics (GWAS), and (bio)medical images (MALDI, MRI and H&E). By employing advanced computational techniques, I aim to uncover insights into complex biological systems, ultimately contributing to advancements in healthcare and biomedical research.
🚀 News
🎤 [03/16/2026] I presented “Reference-Informed Spatial Domain Detection Using Weak Supervision for Spatial Transcriptomics” and served as session chair for “Machine Learning and Causal Inference for Clinical and Genomic Studies”at the ENAR 2026 Spring Meeting in Indianapolis, IN.
📰 [02/04/2026] Honorned to be featured by University of Florida PHHP and to share my story! 🔗https://phhp.ufl.edu/2026/02/04/meet-the-students-of-phhp-xin-ma-ph-d-in-biostatistics/
💼 [01/09/2026] I’m excited to share that I will be joining Eli Lilly and Company as an AI Drug Discovery summer intern (2026) in Indianapolis, Indiana!
📄 [05/12/2025] “Spatial mapping of the brain metabolome lipidome and glycome” is published in Nature Communications 🔗https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-59487-7
🎤 [03/23/2025] I presented “A Semi-Supervised Multi-Modal Model for Domain Detection in Spatial Transcriptomics” at the ENAR 2025 Spring Meeting in New Orleans, LA.
📄 [03/18/2025] “AI-driven Framework to Map the Brain Metabolome in 3D” is published in Nature Metabolism 🔗https://doi.org/10.1038/s42255-025-01242-9.
📍 [02/25/2025] I attended Winter Conference on Brain Research 2025 in Lake Tahoe, CA.
📄 [08/28/2024] “Deep5hmC: Predicting genome-wide 5-hydroxymethylcytosine landscape via a multimodal deep learning model” is published in Bioinformatics 🔗https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btae528.
🏅 [05/13/2024] I won the MCBIOS 2024 Travel Fellowship.
🎤 [03/29/2024] I presented “Deep5hmC: Predicting genome-wide 5-hydroxymethylcytosine landscape via a multimodal deep learning model” at ASA Florida Chapter 2024 in Tallahassee, FL.
🎤 [03/22/2024] I presented “Deep5hmC: Predicting genome-wide 5-hydroxymethylcytosine landscape via a multimodal deep learning model” at MCBIOS 2024 in Atlanta, GA.
🏅 [11/15/2023] I won the Mark C. K. Yang Student Presentation Award.
🎓 [08/21/2023] I passed the written qualifying exam.
🎤 [07/16/2023] I presented “Spatial Metabolome Lipidome Glycome Analyses from a Single Tissue Section” at ICIBM 2023 in Tampa, FL.