Van Q. Truong, MS
Introduction
Hi, I'm Van! I was born in a rural village on the central coast of Vietnam and spent most of my life in Florida. Before I became a scientist, I was first a self-taught artist from a very young age. As a scientist, I am deeply interested in the technical, sociocultural, business, and policy implications of global trends in AI applications, computing infrastructure, and multinational tech policy. As an artist, I'm absolutely obsessed with how AI's presence is changing the way we think, interact, and create with one another. I have over a decade of experience across academic, government, and private sectors.
While I am primarily a computational scientist, I love to wear other hats in art, anthropology, bio/tech ecosystem leadership roles, community involvement, and doing fun hobby side quests. Additionally, I am committed to the mentorship and empowerment of underrepresented students.
My fun fact is at age 19, I biked solo across the country to fundraise for the Alexander Hamilton Scholars Program, a cause close to my heart. I continue to closely mentor high school, college, post-bac, and graduate students.
JUST FOR FUN
My interests outside of work include mountain biking, surfing, rock climbing, camping, foraging wild plants, designing interactive art sculptures, and playing on the Wharton "Wildebeests" rugby team. I previously played on Penn Women's "Venus" ultimate frisbee team and we went to the 2021 USA Ultimate National College Championships ('Natties'). I even got to rally & play in a couple games at Natties despite sustaining a shoulder injury when a car hit me while biking.
Within my community, I serve as the Executive Director of Village Bridges, a Vietnamese heritage organization I co-founded with a team of young women from my village to serve our diaspora community.
Living in Philly has been fun. Here's some things I've put together:
NEWS
2025
January - Our hackathon team won 1st place for our AI agent project at the Immune Health Hackathon
January - Completed all requirements and submitted my MA thesis titled, "A Statistical Exploration of Large Language Models: Evolution, Challenges, and Global Concerns" to the Wharton Department of Statistics and Data Science
2024
December - Exhibited my painterly relief textile sculpture titled "Dear A.I., Please Help Me Fill In My Village Memories" at the Resource Exchange's ReCreate Gallery from Dec 9, 2024 to Feb 26, 2025
August to October - Lived in Vietnam for 3-months setting up a cross-cultural qualitative study to learn about Vietnam's AI, bioinformatics, and the digital infrastructure
August - Co-presented interim results with my team at the AI for Health Equity Symposium AIM-AHEAD Annual Meeting in Atlanta, GA
May - After a competitive selection process among 500 art pieces and 130 artists, my AI art piece was among the chosen for the yearlong "2024-2025 Celebration of Art and Life Exhibition" at the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine
Unfortunately due to cost constraints with framing the art piece, I was forced to withdraw my artwork from the exhibition
April - Exhibited my AI art piece in the final exhibition for the "AI in Art" course at the University of Pennsylvania's Stuart Weitzman Hall Lobby
February - Began the Traineeship in Advanced Data Analysis hosted by the NIH AIM AHEAD and NCATS Programs for underrepresented AI/ML researchers
January - My Fulbright application advanced through Semi-Finalist status
2023
December - Presented my research at the NeurIPS AI4Science Workshop
November - Accepted the ACM SIGHPC Award onstage at SC23 in Denver, CO which drew over 13,000 attendees in the computing field
September - Selected for the Perry World House Global Affairs Graduate Associates Program!
August - Awarded the Graduate Leadership and Engagement Award by my graduate group!
August - Invited to join the organizing team for the 2024 London Geometry and Machine Learning Summer School (LOGML)
July - 1 of 6 awarded the 2023 ACM SIGHPC Computational and Data Science Fellowship globally!
June - Invited to join the organizing team for the 2023 Machine Learning for Health (ML4H) Symposium
June - Started an internship at Eli Lilly & Company at the Lilly Biotechnology Center in San Diego, CA
May - Invited to attend the Symposium on Artificial Intelligence in Learning Health Systems (SAIL)
Travel supported by the Ritchie Lab and Penn's Biomedical Graduate Studies Career Development Fund
February - Attended the 6-Day Stillpond Computational Cytometry Data Analysis Workshop
2022
November - My 1st first-author publication is in print!
1st Author, "Quality Control Procedures for Genome-Wide Association Studies"
October - 1 of 36 awarded the 2022 Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship globally!
September - Submitted our chapter for review in the Current Protocols for Human Genetics
1st Author, "Quality Control Procedures for Genome-Wide Association Studies"
August - Awarded the Excedr Travel Grant to attend the inaugural Nucleate Summit in Boston, MA
August - Abstract accepted at the American Society for Human Genetics Conference in Los Angeles, CA
July - Attended the Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies (FOCiS) Annual Meeting in San Francisco, CA
Systems Immunology Course
Big Data in Immunology Course
June - Became a dual-degree PhD/MA Candidate with Penn Perelman School of Medicine and the Wharton School of Business
May - Successfully passed the Genomics & Computational Biology PhD Candidacy Exams!
April - Invited Speaker at the 2022 Catalyzing Change: Curriculum to Career, Building a Diverse and Equitable STEM Talent Pipeline
January - Abstract accepted at the Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing in Kona, Hawai'i
2021
June - Awarded the Galaxy Conference Fellowship in honor of Dr. James Taylor to support trainees in genomics and data-intensive science to reduce barriers for learning and collaboration by the Galaxy Genomics Community Fund
March - Published our editorial in BioData Mining Journal!
2nd Author, "Ten Important Roles for Academic Leaders to Promote Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Data Science." https://doi.org/10.1186/s13040-021-00256-9
2020
August - Inducted into the Fontaine Society with PhD training support from the Fontaine PhD Fellowship, awarded by the University of Pennsylvania to support the academic development of PhD students from underrepresented backgrounds
May - Graduated from Johns Hopkins with my MS in Biotechnology with two concentrations in Bioinformatics and Molecular Targets & Drug Discovery
May - Published a paper in Nature Communications!
2nd Author, "Dissociable Neural Correlates of Uncertainty Underlie Different Exploration Strategies." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15766-z
FEATURED PRESS
ACM Special Interest Group on High-Performance Computing Press Release, “2023 ACM SIGHPC Computational and Data Science Fellowship Winners”
Penn Graduate Student Center Newsletter, Three PhD Students from Penn Selected as 2022 Microsoft Research PhD Fellows, https://gsc.upenn.edu/2022-microsoft-research-phd-fellows
Women In Bio Press Release, “WIB Awards Founders Scholarship to Six Women in the Life Sciences”
The Huffington Post, "One Florida Student Turned Studying Into Art"
USA Today, "Art meets science: Florida student's creation catching campus' eye"
The Gainesville Sun, "UF students' community projects gain financial support"
Lake Alice Magazine by the University of Florida College of Liberal Arts & Sciences featured a profile on my relentless drive and perseverance as a first-generation college student from an immigrant background
