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Ph.D. in Neuroscience, Kempner Graduate Fellow

B.A. in Mathematics, Physics, and Neuroscience

• summa cum laude
• Honors Thesis: “Exploratory Analysis of Escape Behavior and Circuitry in Larval Zebrafish”
• Advisor: Josef G. Trapani, Ph.D.

Visiting Undergraduate Students Program

• Coursework: Modern Neuroanatomy, Biological and Artificial Intelligence, Electron Microscopy, Graph Theory

Gregory S. Call Research Fellow

• Developed a circuit model of the temporal dynamics of C-bends during larval zebrafish startle responses, integrating field potential, calcium imaging, and behavioral data for an honors thesis.
• Supported electrophysiology and imaging experiments investigating the effects of low-dose cisplatin on hair-cell function and mitochondrial morphology.

Research Intern

• Developed an inverse inference algorithm to extract latent finite-state controller policies and memories from behavioral data.
• Designed a behavioral paradigm and collected data to investigate how conflicting auditory and olfactory signals influence trail-following behavior.

Undergraduate Researcher

• Developed WelQrate, an open-source benchmark comprising nine high-throughput screening datasets, a standardized chemical-curation pipeline, and benchmarking frameworks for probabilistic, sequence-based, and graph-based machine-learning models.
• Developed and evaluated a graph-learning augmentation method integrating expert-crafted molecular descriptors into graph representations, improving predictive performance across multiple graph neural-network architectures.

R&D Intern

• Developed an end-to-end machine-learning pipeline using ChEMBL data and random-forest models to predict multiple bioactivity endpoints for serotonin (5-HT) and dopamine receptors.

Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow

• Helped design and engineer a closed-loop behavioral system in which artificial prey evaded hunting mice using naturalistic escape strategies.
• Collected Neuropixels and keypoint-tracking data and applied hidden Markov models to characterize internal states underlying hunting behavior and their relationship to superior colliculus activity.

Journal Articles

• Liu, Y., Moretti, R., Wang, Y., Dong, H., Yan, B., Bodenheimer, B., Derr, T.^‡, & Meiler, J.^‡ (2025). Advancements in ligand-based virtual screening through the synergistic integration of graph neural networks and expert-crafted descriptors. Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling, 65(10), 4898–4905. [DOI] [PDF]

Refereed Conference Proceedings

• Liu, Y.^†, Dong, H.^†, Wang, X., Moretti, R., Wang, Y., Su, Z., Gu, J., Bodenheimer, B., Weaver, C. D., Meiler, J.^‡, & Derr, T.^‡ (2024). WelQrate: Defining the gold standard in small molecule drug discovery benchmarking. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 37, 53222–53236. [DOI] [PDF] [Website]

^†Equal contribution. ^‡Co-senior author.

Posters

• Pollak, D., Wang, J., Dong, H., Rios, A., Li, X. H., Zhong, E., & Meister, M. (2026, August). A parametric guidance law model of hunting in mice. Poster presented at the 9th Annual Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience (CCN), New York, NY. [Abstract]

Talks

• Dong, H., Meister, M., & Pollak, D. (2024). The states of hunting. Talk presented at the California Institute of Technology Summer Research Seminar, Pasadena, CA.
• Dong, H., Meiler, J., & Liu, Y. (2024). Advances in drug discovery. Talk presented at the AI in the Liberal Arts Undergraduate Conference, Amherst, MA.
• Dong, H., Meiler, J., & Liu, Y. (2023). Deep graph learning benchmark for ligand-based drug discovery. Talk presented at the Amherst College Summer Research Seminar, Amherst, MA.

• Kempner Graduate Fellowship, Harvard University
• Ryan EDGE Fellowship, Harvard Medical School
• Obed Finch Slingerland Memorial Prize, Amherst College Board of Trustees

• Charles Hamilton Houston Research Grant ($5,000), Amherst College

• Break Through Tech AI Fellowship, MIT Schwarzman College of Computing

• Scholar Travel Award, NeurIPS
• Gregory S. Call Travel Award ($1,000), Amherst College
• Meiklejohn Summer Research Grant ($5,000), Amherst College

• Meiklejohn Summer Research Grant ($5,000), Amherst College

• The Grosfeld Family Scholarship, Amherst College

• Top 20 Outstanding Young Vietnamese Faces Award (national youth honor), Government of Vietnam
• Labor Order, Third Class (national civilian order of merit), Government of Vietnam
• Gold Medal, International Medicine and Disease Olympiad, IMDO Foundation Board
• Exemplary Young Citizen Award, Vietnam Youth Federation

• Top 50 Global Finalist, Global Student Prize, Chegg.org & Varkey Foundation
• Silver Medal, Rudolf Ortvay International Competition in Physics for Undergraduates, Hungarian Association of Physics Students
• Silver Medal, International Biology Olympiad, IBO Committee

• Education Profession Fellowship, Loeb Career Center, Amherst College
• Meiklejohn Fellowship, Loeb Career Center, Amherst College

Teaching Assistant

• Animal Physiology, Spring 2026 (Instructor: Dr. Josef Trapani)
• Electromagnetism and Optics, Fall 2023 (Instructors: Dr. Juan Vasquez Carmona, Dr. Jarrett Moyer)
• Molecules, Genes & Cells, Spring 2023 (Instructors: Dr. Alexandra Purdy, Dr. Katerina Ragkousi, Dr. Christina Bowers)

Grader

• Graph Theory, Spring 2026 (Instructor: Dr. Miriam Kuzbary)
• Linear Algebra, Fall 2025 (Instructor: Dr. Joseph Palmer)
• Introduction to Analysis, Fall 2024 (Instructor: Dr. Ryan Alvarado)

Biology Teacher

• Subjects: Molecular and Cellular Biology, Plant and Animal Physiology, Genetics, Evolutionary Biology, Ecology
• Notable outcomes: 1 International Biology Olympiad gold medal, 14 National Olympiad medals

Vice President

Organizer, Syllabus Design Workshops for Faculty

Founder & President

Pedagogical Fellow

Academic Coach

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Fellow

Panelist

Student Panelist

Manuscript Peer Review

Member of Board

Founder & President

Project Lead & English Teacher

Organizer

Admissions Committee & Mentor in Biology