APrf Thuc Le
Associate Professor
School of Computer Science and Information Technology
College of Engineering and Information Technology
Eligible to supervise Masters and PhD - email supervisor to discuss availability.
I am an Associate Professor in Computer Science. I have a diverse educational background with BSc and MSc in Mathematics, BSc in Computer Science, and PhD in Computer Science. I have been awarded the Ian Davey Thesis Prize for the most outstanding PhD thesis in 2014, then received an NHMRC ECR Fellow in Bioinformatics/Computational Biology (2017-2019), and DECRA Fellow (2020-2022). I was a visiting researcher at the University of Michigan in 2015, and a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania in 2019.
Please feel free to contact me for collaborations.
My research focuses on the development of Causal AI methods and their applications across various domains, particularly in Bioinformatics. Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary field that integrates knowledge from Computer Science, Mathematics, and Statistics to address biological problems. We develop Causal AI methods to uncover gene regulatory networks, identify cancer drivers, investigate the roles of non-coding RNAs in cancer, classify cancer subtypes, and discover potential drug targets.
I am listed as Australia’s top researcher in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (Engineering and Computer Science) in 2025 and in 2026 by The Australian Research Magazine
Apply for PhD scholarships here
My publications: Google Scholar and go here to download the papers.
| Date | Position | Institution name |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 - ongoing | Associate Professor | Adelaide University |
| 2021 - 2025 | Associate Professor | University of South Australia |
| 2017 - 2020 | Senior Lecturer & DECRA Fellow | University of South Australia |
| 2014 - 2017 | NHMRC Fellow | University of South Australia |
| Date | Type | Title | Institution Name | Country | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Recognition | listed as Australia’s top researcher in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (Engineering and Computer Science) in 2026 by The Australian Research Magazine | University of South Australia | Australia | - |
| 2024 | Recognition | listed as Australia’s top researcher in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (Engineering and Computer Science) in 2025 by The Australian Research Magazine | University of South Australia | Australia | - |
| 2022 | Award | Best Paper Award | University of South Australia | Australia | - |
| 2020 | Award | Best Paper Award | University of South Australia | Australia | - |
| 2015 | Award | Ian Davey Thesis Prize | University of South Australia | Australia | - |
| Language | Competency |
|---|---|
| English | Can read, write, speak, understand spoken and peer review |
| Vietnamese | Can read, write, speak, understand spoken and peer review |
| Date | Institution name | Country | Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 - 2014 | University of South Australia | Australia | PhD |
| 2008 - 2010 | University of South Australia | Australia | Bachelor |
| 2003 - 2006 | Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City | Viet Nam | Master |
| 1998 - 2002 | Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City | Viet Nam | Bachelor |
| Year | Citation |
|---|---|
| 2026 | Pinero, S., Li, X., Liu, L., Li, J., Lee, S. H., & Le, T. D. (2026). SPLIT: Safety Prioritization for Long COVID Drug Repurposing via a Causal Integrated Targeting Framework. DOI |
| 2025 | Vu, T., Tran, H., Liu, L., Li, J., Du, J. T., & Le, T. (2025). Foundation Model-Based Recommendation of Optimal Neoadjuvant Therapy in Breast Cancer. DOI |
| 2025 | Piñero, S., Li, X., Liu, L., Li, J., Lee, S. H., Winter, M., . . . Le, T. D. (2025). TACO: TabPFN Augmented Causal Outcomes for Early Detection of Long COVID. DOI |
| 2025 | Vu, T., Tran, H., Li, X., Liu, L., Li, J., Pinero, S., . . . Le, T. (2025). Tabular Foundation Model for Breast Cancer Prognosis using Gene Expression Data. DOI |
| 2025 | Pinero, S., Li, X., Zhang, J., Winter, M., Lee, S. H., Nguyen, T., . . . Le, T. D. (2025). Omics-Based Computational Approaches for Biomarker Identification, Prediction, and Treatment of Long COVID. DOI |
| 2025 | Pinero, S., Li, X., Liu, L., Li, J., Lee, S. H., Winter, M., . . . Le, T. D. (2025). Integrative Multi-Omics Framework for Causal Gene Discovery in Long COVID. DOI |
| 2025 | Liu, X., Zhang, W., Tang, W., Le, T. D., Li, J., Liu, L., & Zhang, M. -L. (2025). From Correlation to Causation: Max-Pooling-Based Multi-Instance Learning Leads to More Robust Whole Slide Image Classification. |
| 2024 | Amente, L. D., Mills, N., Le, T. D., Hyppönen, E., & Lee, H. (2024). A latent outcome variable approach for Mendelian randomization using the expectation maximization algorithm. DOI |
| 2023 | Cifuentes-Bernal, A., Liu, L., Li, J., & Le, T. D. (2023). Identifying cooperative genes causing cancer progression with dynamic causal inference. DOI |
| 2023 | Zhang, J., Liu, L., Wei, X., Zhao, C., Luo, Y., Li, J., & Le, T. D. (2023). Scanning sample-specific miRNA regulation from bulk and single-cell RNA-sequencing data. DOI |
| 2023 | Zhang, J., Liu, L., Wei, X., Zhao, C., Li, S., Li, J., & Le, T. D. (2023). Pan-cancer characterization of ncRNA synergistic competition uncovers potential carcinogenic biomarkers. DOI |
| 2021 | Li, X., Liu, L., Li, J., & Le, T. (2021). Stable breast cancer prognosis. DOI |
| 2020 | Cifuentes-Bernal, A., Pham, V. V. H., Li, X., Liu, L., Li, J., & Le, T. D. (2020). A Pseudo-Temporal Causality Approach to Identifying miRNA-mRNA Interactions During Biological Processes. DOI |
| 2020 | Zhang, J., Liu, L., Xu, T., Zhang, W., Zhao, C., Li, S., . . . Le, T. D. (2020). Exploring cell-specific miRNA regulation with single-cell miRNA-mRNA co-sequencing data. DOI |
| 2020 | Pham, V. V. H., Li, X., Truong, B., Nguyen, T., Liu, L., Li, J., & Le, T. (2020). The winning methods for predicting cellular position in the DREAM single cell transcriptomics challenge. DOI |
| 2020 | Pham, V. V. H., Liu, L., Bracken, C., Nguyen, T., Goodall, G., Li, J., & Le, T. (2020). <i>pDriver</i> : A novel method for unravelling personalised coding and miRNA cancer drivers. DOI |
| 2020 | Pham, V. V. H., Liu, L., Bracken, C., Goodall, G., Li, J., & Le, T. (2020). <i>DriverGroup</i> : A novel method for identifying driver gene groups. DOI |
| 2019 | Zhang, J., Pham, V. V. H., Liu, L., Xu, T., Truong, B., Li, J., . . . Le, T. D. (2019). Identifying miRNA synergism using multiple-intervention causal inference. DOI |
| 2019 | Zhang, J., Xu, T., Liu, L., Zhang, W., Zhao, C., Li, S., . . . Le, T. D. (2019). LMSM: a modular approach for identifying lncRNA related miRNA sponge modules in breast cancer. DOI |
| 2019 | Tanevski, J., Nguyen, T., Truong, B., Karaiskos, N., Ahsen, M. E., Zhang, X., . . . Meyer, P. (2019). Predicting cellular position in the <i>Drosophila</i> embryo from Single-Cell Transcriptomics data. DOI Europe PMC1 |
| 2019 | Nguyen, T., Lee, S., Quinn, T., Truong, B., Li, X., Tran, T., . . . Le, T. D. (2019). PAN: Personalized Annotation-based Networks for the Prediction of Breast Cancer Relapse. DOI |
| 2018 | Zhang, W., Le, T., Liu, L., & Li, J. (2018). Estimating heterogeneous treatment effects by balancing heterogeneity and fitness. DOI |
| 2018 | Zhang, J., Liu, L., Xu, T., Xie, Y., Zhao, C., Li, J., & Le, T. D. (2018). miRsponge: an R/Bioconductor package for the identification and analysis of miRNA sponge interaction networks and modules. DOI |
| 2018 | Xu, T., Su, N., Liu, L., Zhang, J., Wang, H., Zhang, W., . . . Le, T. D. (2018). miRBaseConverter: An R/Bioconductor Package for Converting and Retrieving miRNA Name, Accession, Sequence and Family Information in Different Versions of miRBase. DOI |
| 2018 | Pham, V. V. H., Zhang, J., Liu, L., Truong, B. M. T., Xu, T., Nguyen, T. T., . . . Le, T. D. (2018). Identifying miRNA-mRNA regulatory relationships in breast cancer with invariant causal prediction. DOI |
- Decarbonising concrete with halloysite, recycled plastic fibres and AI, ARC - Linkage, 01/01/2026 - 31/12/2028
- Build competency aware and assuring machine learning systems, ARC - Discovery Projects, 01/01/2023 - 31/12/2026
- Next generation causal inference methods for biological data, ARC - Discovery Early Career Researcher Award, 01/01/2020 - 31/12/2023
- Maxima Training Group (Aust) Limited Scholarship, Maxima Training Group (Aust) Limited, 01/10/2019 - 30/06/2023
- System biology approaches to uncovering non-coding RNAs' roles in characterising cancer
subtypes, NHMRC - Early Career Fellowship, 01/01/2017 - 31/12/2020
Courses I teach
- INFS 3077 Text and Social Media Analytics (2025)
- INFS 5144 Data Wrangling and Social Media Analytics (2025)
- MATH 5045 Advanced Analytic Techniques (2025)
- INFS 5144 Data Wrangling and Social Media Analytics (2024)
- MATH 5045 Advanced Analytic Techniques (2024)
| Date | Role | Research Topic | Program | Degree Type | Student Load | Student Name |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | Principal Supervisor | Utilizing AI to improve disease prediction and public health responses | Doctor of Philosophy | Doctorate | Full Time | Mr Hai Thanh Pham |
| 2026 | Co-Supervisor | Enhancing Polygenic Risk Scores for Disease Risk Prediction in Clinical Applications | Doctor of Philosophy | Doctorate | Full Time | Mr Shahidul Islam |
| 2025 | Principal Supervisor | Developing AI models for identifying the causes of Long COVID | Doctor of Philosophy | Doctorate | Full Time | Mr Xin Liu |
| 2023 | Principal Supervisor | 109492- Developing causal-based methods for recommending the repurposed drugs for a disease and applications in breast cancer and SARS-CoV-2 | Doctor of Philosophy | Doctorate | Full Time | Mr Tuyen Vu |
| 2023 | Co-Supervisor | Develop causality-based models for robust and adaptive drought predictions | Doctor of Philosophy | Doctorate | Full Time | Wentao Gao |
| 2023 | Co-Supervisor | Transformer-based causal inference methods for temporal data with latent confounders | Doctor of Philosophy | Doctorate | Full Time | Mr Xudong Guo |
| 2022 | Co-Supervisor | Novel statistical genomics methods for disentangling genetic architecture and causal pathways in cardiometabolic traits | Doctor of Philosophy | Doctorate | Full Time | Lamessa Amente |
| 2022 | Co-Supervisor | Develop causal outcome prediction models for trustworthy interpretation | Doctor of Philosophy | Doctorate | Full Time | Xiongren Chen |
| 2022 | Principal Supervisor | Computational methods for finding causal biomarkers and treatments for COVID-19 | Doctor of Philosophy | Doctorate | Full Time | Ms Sindy Pinero |
| Date | Role | Research Topic | Program | Degree Type | Student Load | Student Name |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 - 2023 | Co-Supervisor | Investigating the fairness of predictive learning analytics models in static and dynamic environments | Doctor of Philosophy | Doctorate | Full Time | Mr Oscar Deho |
| 2020 - 2022 | Principal Supervisor | Intervention recommendation for disability employment service | Doctor of Philosophy | Doctorate | Full Time | Mr Ha Tran |
| 2019 - 2024 | Principal Supervisor | Dynamic causal inference methods for modelling biological processes in cancer | Doctor of Philosophy | Doctorate | Full Time | Mr Andres Cifuentes Bernal |
| 2018 - 2022 | Principal Supervisor | Computational modelling for breast cancer prognosis in precision medicine | Doctor of Philosophy | Doctorate | Full Time | Ms Xiaomei Li |
| 2018 - 2021 | Principal Supervisor | Developing network inference methods for cancer driver discovery | Doctor of Philosophy | Doctorate | Full Time | Mr Vu Viet Hoang Pham |
| 2017 - 2021 | Co-Supervisor | Dependency-based anomaly detection and applications | Doctor of Philosophy | Doctorate | Full Time | Miss Sha Lu |
| 2015 - 2018 | Co-Supervisor | Computational causal discovery from observational data and application in bioinformatics | Doctor of Philosophy | Doctorate | Full Time | Mr Weijia Zhang |
| 2013 - 2017 | Co-Supervisor | Developing data mining methods for finding causal relationships involving multiple factors | Doctor of Philosophy | Doctorate | Full Time | Mr Saisai Ma |
| Date | Role | Board name | Institution name | Country |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 - 2025 | Co-Founder | Data Analytics Group | University of South Australia | Australia |
| Date | Role | Membership | Country |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 - ongoing | Member | ABACBS | - |
| Date | Role | Editorial Board Name | Institution | Country |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 - ongoing | Associate Editor | BMC Cancer | University of South Australia | Australia |
| 2020 - ongoing | Associate Editor | Plos One | University of South Australia | Australia |
| Date | Engagement Type | Partner Name |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 - 2023 | Research Contract | Maxima Group |
| Date | Title | Type | Institution | Country |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 - ongoing | ARC, NHMRC, European Grant Councils | Grant Assessment | University of South Australia | - |
Available For Media Comment.