Kevin Shen (left) and Rikard Saqe (right) leveraging AI to analyze data sets in the lab.
Two students from the faculties of Science and Mathematics are exploring new ways to bring cultivated seafood to the table. Kevin Shen (BCS ’24) and Rikard Saqe’s idea to apply computational modelling to understand how fish cells grow and transform, has earned them more than $700,000 in grants from the Good Food Institute (GFI), Mitacs and New Harvest to scale their research efforts.
Shen is a Master of Science (Biology) student and a recent graduate in the Computer Science program, while Saqe is completing his undergraduate studies in the Faculty of Mathematics with hopes of pursuing a Master of Science afterward. Throughout their undergraduate degrees at Waterloo, the two students completed co-op placements where they used AI and machine learning techniques to analyze large data sets. Their shared skill sets and passions led them to pursue bioinformatics, a field where they could tackle the complex problems of animal welfare and food security. Shen and Saqe believe that applications of AI are just starting to be explored and they are eager to be involved in these efforts.
"Climate change and food security are two of the biggest challenges we face as a society,” Shen says. “Alternative proteins and cellular agriculture use far less land and water, providing a sustainable alternative to traditional meat products."
Their research is supported by grants and the guidance of Dr. Brian Dixon, a professor in the Department of Biology at Waterloo and a Canada Research Chair in Fish and Environmental Immunology, Dr. Brian Ingalls, a professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics, and Dr. Nguyen Vo (PhD ‘15), a professor at Wilfrid Laurier University. The students aim to establish a scientific basis that could contribute to the large-scale production of cultivated foods, specifically fish. These research goals were developed within the Waterloo Alt Protein Project design team, part of a global network of more than 60 student-led organizations supported by the GFI.
To learn more, please visit the original article Leveraging AI in cultivated seafood research by Sarah Fullerton on Waterloo News.