Xin Gao is a Professor of Computer Science, Interim Director of Computational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC), and Lead of the Structural and Functional Bioinformatics Group at KAUST. Prof. Gao received his bachelor degree in Computer Science from Tsinghua University, and his PH.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo in Canada. Prior to joining KAUST, he was a Lane Fellow at the Lane Center for Computational Biology at Carnegie Mellon University, U.S.A. Prof. Gao's group works on the intersection between computer science and biology. In the computational side, they work on developing theories and methods for deep learning, graphical models, kernel methods, matrix factorization, optimization and graph algorithms. In the biological side, they collaborate closely with experimental scientists to develop novel computational methods to solve key open problems in biology and medicine. The biological problems they are working on range from analyzing biomolecular sequences to determining their 3D structures to annotating their functions and understanding and controlling their behaviors in complex biological networks. His group also works on medicine and healthcare.