Published 01/12/2025 By nAG
Last year we announced a new award: the nAG and NI-HPC WHPC (Women in HPC) Student Award, created to recognise and support emerging talent in computational science, data-intensive research, and HPC-enabled discovery.
Fast-forward, and we were delighted to award the first winner: Zeinab Abdelrahman, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast for her work “Accelerating Multi-Omics Analysis with High-Performance Computing.” The award was presented at the first NI-HPC day held in November 2025.
Photo 1 (left): Roger Woods, Professor of Computer Hardware, Queens University Belfast, Zeinab Abdelrahman, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Queen’s University Belfast.
Photo 2 (right): (left to right): Zara Birch, Engagement Lead, Queens University Belfast and WHPC Ireland, Roger Woods, Professor of Computer Hardware, Queens University Belfast, Zeinab Abdelrahman, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Queen’s University Belfast, David Smyth, Director, NI-HPC.
Zeinab holds a PhD in Clinical Pharmacy and focuses her research on multi-omics data integration to better understand complex disease mechanisms, including diabetic kidney disease and rare conditions. Her work sits at the intersection of molecular biology and bioinformatics, enabling breakthroughs that advance precision medicine.
In her award-winning poster, Zeinab demonstrated how HPC dramatically accelerates large-scale multi-omics analysis, reducing workflows that once took days to just minutes. This speed—combined with increased stability and reproducibility—makes it possible to analyse and integrate a range of biological data types, such as:
Integrating these layers is essential for uncovering hidden biological patterns that are often invisible when each dataset is analysed in isolation.
For areas such as kidney research and rare disease studies, this approach allows scientists to identify genetic and epigenetic markers, metabolic signatures, and protein-level changes that together reveal new disease mechanisms and potential therapeutic targets. In large cohort studies, HPC enables researchers to scale analyses to hundreds or thousands of samples while maintaining accuracy and reproducibility—significantly accelerating discovery.
Zeinab’s vision extends beyond her current research. She is committed to developing scalable, user-friendly computational workflows that make advanced analysis more accessible, helping students and early-career researchers achieve meaningful results without technical or time barriers.
We are delighted to recognise Zeinab’s outstanding achievements and look forward to seeing her continued impact on the future of biomedical research, HPC-driven discovery, and precision medicine.
Congratulations again to Zeinab, the inaugural nAG and NI-HPC WHPC Student Award winner!
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