Khan Ali Yawar
Khan Ali Yawar
Genome Science and Technology (GST)
Yawar is a Graduate Research Assistant at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), working at the intersection of artificial intelligence, computational genomics, and plant bioengineering. His research focuses on developing evolutionary and AI-based models to predict gene function and cell-type-specific programs across plant species.
As part of his research, he developed the Plant Bioengineering Atlas (PBA), an AI-assisted, ontology-grounded knowledge base web portal designed to accelerate plant synthetic biology and biodesign. The atlas organizes data into a structured knowledge graph that directly links genes, DNA constructs, host species, and engineered plant traits.
His previous research has included applying machine learning and deep learning to biological problems, including cancer subtype classification using histopathological images and computational analysis of viral protein interactions.
Education
Yawar holds a Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and a Master’s degree in Bioinformatics.
Research
Yawar is currently pursuing research at the intersection of computational biology, machine learning, and plant genomics. His current research focuses on developing computational and AI-based approaches for understanding gene function and evolutionary relationships across plant species, leveraging high-performance computing and Natural Language Processing to accelerate discovery in plant genomics.