Dr. Xuemei (Missi) Zhang, a Bioinformatician with Virginia Tech’s Center for Biostatistics and Health Data Science (CBHDS), was selected to participate in the prestigious Vertical Interoperability Innovation Lab workshop hosted by the NIH Office of Data Science Strategy, National Cancer Institute, and National Library of Medicine. Participation in the workshop is highly competitive, with approximately 30 participants selected nationally from across the biomedical data ecosystem.

The workshop brings together interdisciplinary experts to explore solutions for improving interoperability across the research data lifecycle, including data integration, reproducibility, computational workflows, and cross-platform collaboration. Participants will engage in collaborative project development focused on advancing biomedical data science and enabling more seamless research translation.

At CBHDS, Missi plays a central role in supporting researchers across Virginia Tech, particularly investigators affiliated with the Fralin Life Sciences Institute. While rooted in computational biology, Missi’s versatile expertise spans a unique combination of methodologies, ranging from multi-omics data analysis and image data to high-dimensional integrated datasets, survey data, and high-throughput computational workflows. She regularly collaborates with interdisciplinary teams to help researchers design studies, analyze complex biological data, and develop reproducible analytical pipelines.

Missi’s selection highlights both her growing national visibility in biomedical data science and CBHDS’s continued commitment to advancing bioinformatics support and collaborative research infrastructure at Virginia Tech. Her participation will help strengthen connections between emerging NIH data science initiatives and the university’s expanding life sciences research community.