Minghao Sun

PhD Candidate · Department of Computer Science
National University of Singapore

Hi! I'm Minghao, a Year-2 PhD candidate at ZhangLab / DeepMed, Department of Computer Science, National University of Singapore. I'm advised by Prof. Yang Zhang and supported by the President's Graduate Fellowship (PGF).

Prior to my PhD, I earned my Bachelor's from Zhejiang University in Veterinary Medicine and Statistics, with a minor in Computer Science.

Email: minghao [dot] sun [at] u [dot] nus [dot] edu

Google Scholar · LinkedIn

Taken at Hong Kong Museum of Art 香港藝術館

Research

AI for RNA biology and design. I'm interested in the generative AI, RL/PO methods for RNA design that respect RNA biology (structure, stability, chemical modification, conformational dynamics, thermodynamics). I also aim at building rigorous evaluation frameworks for the RNA design problem. Longer term, I want to bridge RNA design with functional design and real-world use: practical RNAs and RNA therapeutics.

More broadly, I closely follow advances in general AI (reinforcement learning, LLMs, agents) and ready for translating them into AI4Science and RNA design.

I'm actively looking for wet-lab collaborators in RNA design, especially around functional RNAs and therapeutics.

News

[2026/05] One paper accepted at KDD 2026 AI4Science Track.
[2026/05] One paper published in eLife.

Selected Publications (Google Scholar)

* equal contribution · † corresponding author

KDD’26AI4Science

The Forgetting-Learning Trade-off: Making Reinforcement Learning Work for Protein Language Models. [Paper]

Hanqun Cao^*, Hongrui Zhang^*, Junde Xu, Zhou Zhang, Lingdong Shen, Minghao Sun, Ge Liu, Jinbo Xu, Wu-Jun Li, Jinren Ni, Cesar de la Fuente-Nunez, Tianfan Fu, Shuting Jin, Pheng-Ann Heng, Fang Wu^†

eLife

ProteinConformers: large-scale and energetically profiled descriptions of protein conformational landscapes. [Paper]

Yihang Zhou^*, Chen Wei^*, Minghao Sun, Lin Wang, Jin Song, Fanding Xu, Yang Li, Wei Zheng, Yang Zhang^†

Preprintunder review

Multi-Oracle Agreement Reveals the Limits of Self-Consistency Evaluation in RNA Design. [Paper]

Minghao Sun, Hanqun Cao, Fang Wu, Zhou Zhang, Zhiyuan Liu, Tianfan Fu, Pheng-Ann Heng, Yang Zhang^†

arXiv2026

Ligand-Conditioned Discrete Diffusion for Protein Sequence–Structure Co-Design. [Paper]

Chen Wei, Fanding Xu, Minghao Sun, Zhiyuan Liu, Lin Wang, Tianrui Jia, Yihang Zhou^†, Yang Zhang^†

arXiv2025

RiboPO: Preference Optimization for Structure- and Stability-Aware RNA Design. [Paper]

Minghao Sun^*, Hanqun Cao^*, Zhou Zhang^*, Chen Wei, Liang Wang, Tianrui Jia, Zhiyuan Liu, Tianfan Fu, Xiangru Tang, Yejin Choi, Pheng-Ann Heng, Fang Wu^†, Yang Zhang^†

NeurIPS’25D&B Track

ProteinConformers: Benchmark Dataset for Simulating Protein Conformational Landscape Diversity and Plausibility. [Paper]

Yihang Zhou^*, Chen Wei^*, Minghao Sun, Jin Song, Yang Li, Lin Wang^†, Yang Zhang^†

Genes2022

Bioinformatics and Experimental Analyses Reveal NFIC as an Upstream Transcriptional Regulator for Ischemic Cardiomyopathy. [Paper]

Yang Ye^*, Qiao Jin^*, Qian Gong, Aoqi Li, Minghao Sun, Sibo Jiang, Yulan Jin, Zhe Zhang, Jin He, Lenan Zhuang^†

Genes2021

Molecular Phylogenetic Analysis of the AIG Family in Vertebrates. [Paper]

Yuqi Huang^*, Minghao Sun^*, Lenan Zhuang^†, Jin He^†

Academic Services

Reviewer. ICLR 2025, ICML 2026 (Gold Reviewer), NeurIPS 2026.

Co-Reviewer. Nature Communications (Early Career Researcher, ECR).

Mentee. Chelsea Yep (NUS CS Master's Student).