Rate My Professor Dr Minh Bui

Associate Professor Minh Bui serves at the School of Computing, Australian National University, where he holds the position of HDR Convener for Computational Science. His academic journey began with a B.Sc. in Computer Science from Vietnam National University in 2001, followed by an M.Sc. in Applied Computer Science from the University of Freiburg, Germany, in 2005, and a Ph.D. in Bioinformatics from the University of Vienna, Austria, in 2009. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Max Perutz Laboratories in Vienna, Bui joined ANU in 2018 as a Research Fellow. He progressed rapidly through the ranks: Lecturer in 2019, Senior Lecturer in 2021, and Associate Professor in 2024.

As leader of the Computational Phylogenomics Lab, Bui's research intersects computing, biology, and statistics, with a focus on enabling evolutionary studies in the genomic era. He develops advanced bioinformatic methods, statistical models of molecular evolution, and high-performance computing solutions for inferring phylogenies from massive genomic datasets. Bui co-leads the international team behind IQ-TREE, a flagship open-source software pivotal in phylogenetic analysis and notably used worldwide for tracking SARS-CoV-2 variants during the COVID-19 pandemic. His scholarly impact is profound, with over 90,000 citations. Notable awards include the 2023 Eureka Prize for Excellence in Research Software (jointly with Professor Robert Lanfear), Highly Cited Researcher recognition by Web of Science annually from 2021 to 2024, and Field Leader in Evolutionary Biology by The Australian in 2019, 2022, and 2023. Key publications encompass "IQ-TREE: A Fast and Effective Stochastic Algorithm for Estimating Maximum-Likelihood Phylogenies" (Nguyen et al., Molecular Biology and Evolution, 2015), "ModelFinder: Fast Model Selection for Accurate Phylogenetic Estimates" (Kalyaanamoorthy et al., Nature Methods, 2017), and "IQ-TREE 2: New Models and Efficient Methods for Phylogenetic Inference in the Genomic Era" (Minh et al., Molecular Biology and Evolution, 2020). Additionally, he contributes as Associate Editor for Molecular Biology and Evolution (since 2024) and Journal of Molecular Evolution (since 2021).