About me

Hello there! My name is Vera Bereg. I am a Russian Canadian that is currently attending the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. I am a fourth year undergraduate student majoring in Computer Science and minoring in Psychology. My current research interests are bioinformatics and theoretical part of computer science involving algorithm complexity, classical logical problems and computational geometry.

In the summer 2004, I was fourtunate enough to land an Undergraduate Research Assistant position for my first Co-op term. I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to work with such wonderful people such as Dr. Anne Condon, Dr. Holger Hoos and last but not least, Ph.D. student Mirela Andronescu (to learn more about my mentors, check out my mentors page). I learned a lot during this term down at the Beta lab as well as at Caltech summer school.

Besides being a computer geek, I enjoy other things, such as skiing up at Cypress, Seymour and Whistler mountains, biking at Stanley Park, playing tennis at Tsawwassen beach, sunbathing at Spanish Banks, and swimming in the Pacific ocean and the mountain lakes which are plentiful at Vancouver. For some of the magnificent views of Vancouver, check out the CS UBC photo gallery site.

Here is a list of things I did during my work term and stuff I am planning on doing during the fall term:

While working on Linux, I was combining a number of programs, written in C/C++, and implementing new Dynamic Programming solutions for analyzing the secondary RNA structures. We were working on putting together an RNA database (RNA SSTRAND), access to which is available through a PHP website with some Perl and Matlab scripts involved. The database was implemented with MySQL. An article about RNA SSTRAND has been submitted to the NAR journal. A poster was presented on the subject of RNA SSTRAND during the September Open House at CS UBC event (see SSTRAND section for details). A similar poster will be presented by Dr. Anne Condon and me during the DMP reunion conference. In October, we will be also attending the Grace Hopper conference in Chicago. I will also be volunteering for the OOPSLA 2004 conference in later October. In the fall semester, I will continue working for Dr. Anne Condon.

In July 2004, I was off to a Computer Science Beyond Silicon Valley Summer School at California Institute of Technology. Where I was attending a series of lectures on the latest research in the fields of Physics of Computing, Bioinformatics, Molecular Computing and Quantum Computing science/engineering disciplines. I have meet many interesting people there. Together with Bethany Andres-Beck (Smith University), Stephanie Lee (Columbia University), Michael Lindmark (University of Washington) and Wojciech Makowiecki (AGH University of Science and Technology Jagiellonian University) we wrote a report on "Branching in DNA Computations". Blair, Mike and I have given a brief talk about this project during the last week of our stay at Caltech. On August 24, I gave a talk about the project down at the Beta lab with the following abstract:

Branching in DNA Computing
The 20th century has seen a lot of change especially in the fields of science and technology. By the 21st century people have not only leaned to see rapidly escalating changes in their everyday world, they have learned to live by the principle of Gestalt. This is what the Summer School Beyond Silicon Valley program at the California Institute of Technology was about, incorporating Gestalt principle into the minds of the future scientists. I would like to share with you this overwhelming experience. Conventional fields such as Biology, Chemistry and Physics were taken and have been integrated with the Computer Science. I will mostly talk about the project that my group and I have explored: "Branching in DNA Computing". This will include a little bit of everything from computer architecture design to patient diagnosis and SAT problems being solved using the double helix. In the end, I hope you find it interesting and perhaps even intriguing.

Here are some general facts about me, which I managed to pull out of my resume:

Recieved:
May 2004      NSERC and DMP awards
July 2003      Summer Language Bursary Program certificate (French)
Languages: Fluent English and Russian, fair knowledge of French and German.
UBC related: member of CSSS, UBC Dance Club, ping pong club, CS tri-mentoring, and CS high school requirement.
General: member of Off-Ramp organization, and John Cassablancas Modelling Agency; played one of the leading roles in a French play (July 2003); had an article published in "Youth ink" (May 2000); enjoy skiing, biking, swimming, jogging, tennis playing; am an avid reader both in English and Russian.