People

PI

Xin He

Principal Investigator

xinhe@uchicago.edu

Xin is Associate Professor in Dep. of Human Genetics at Univ. of Chicago. Xin completed his PhD in Computer Science in 2009 at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he worked with Saurabh Sinha. Before his current position, Xin completed postdoc training with Dr. Hao Li at Department of Biochemistry of UCSF, and with Drs. Kathryn Roeder and Ziv Bar-Joseph at Lane Center for Computational Biology of Carnegie Mellon University. Xin is interested in statistical genetics and genomics, computational biology/bioinformatics and evolutionary genomics.

kevin-luo

Kevin Luo

Staff Scientist

kaixuan@uchicago.edu

Kevin (Kaixuan罗凯旋) Luo completed his PhD in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics in 2016 from Duke University, where he was supervised by Dr. Alex Hartemink, and collaborated with Greg Crawford, David MacAlpine, and Li Ma. His PhD research focused on modeling the dynamics of genome-wide transcription factor and nucleosome occupancy. Kevin joined the lab in October, 2016. He is jointly supervised by Dr. Matthew Stephens. Kevin is interested in developing statistical and machine learning methods to better understand the mechanisms by which genetic variation impacts gene regulation.

Nathan

Nathan LaPierre 

Postdoc

nathanl2012@gmail.com

Nathan received his PhD in Computer Science in 2022 from UCLA, advised by Eleazar Eskin and Wei Wang. His PhD research focused on genetic association mapping, causal inference, and metagenomics. Nathan joined the lab in August, 2022 and is jointly supervised by Dr. Matthew Stephens. He is interested in developing statistical & causal inference methods that improve understanding of complex disease etiology and regulatory biology.

Lifan_Liang

Lifan Liang 

Postdoc

lifanl@uchicago.edu

Lifan Liang (梁力凡) received his PhD in Biomedical Informatics in 2021 from the University of Pittsburgh, advised by Dr. Songjian Lu. His PhD research focused on modeling biological mechanisms in cancer with machine learning methods. Lifan joined the lab in November, 2021. He is interested in single cell genomics and statistical genetics.

Sun_Xiaotong

Xiaotong Sun

Postdoc

sxt1229@uchicago.edu

Xiaotong Sun (孙晓彤) received her PhD from Peking University in China. She was a visiting student from 2019 to 2021, and joined the lab as a postdoc in April, 2022. Xiaotong's PhD work focused on identifying disease-causing biological pathways. Her current projects aim at integrating single-cell genomic data with human genetic studies.

Jing_Gu

Jing Gu

PhD student

jinggu@uchicago.edu

Jing received her BS and MS in Biochemistry from UC San Diego, and started the PhD program in Genetics, Genomics and System Biology at the University of Chicago in 2019.
She joined the lab in September, 2020. She is interested in using statistical methods to integrate molecular traits and genetic associations to better understand complex disease etiology.

Qian_Sheng

Sheng Qian

PhD student

shengqian@uchicago.edu

Sheng Qian obtained his BS in Biometry & Statistics from Cornell University and in Applied Bioscience from Zhejiang University jointly in 2019. He joined the lab in July, 2019 as a research assistant, and then joined Human Genetics PhD program in 2020, and the lab in 2021. Sheng's project focused on discovery risk genes from human genetic association studies.

Zicheng Wang

PhD student

zichengwang@uchicago.edu

Zicheng obtained his MS in Computational Biology from Harvard. He is a PhD student in the Human Genetics program and joined the lab in 2023. Zicheng is interested in the development and application of statistical methods in human genetics.

Ethan_Zhong

Ethan Zhong

PhD student

xzhong999@uchicago.edu

Ethan (Xiaoyuan) is a Human Genetics graduate student who joined the lab in 2022, working closely with Prof. Carole Ober. Before coming to Chicago, he studied economics, applied math, and statistics at UW-Madison. He is interested in using computational approaches to better understand genetic variations related to the onset and progression of human diseases.

Waqaas

Waqaas Akmal Butt

MS student

waqaas@uchicago.edu

Waqaas Akmal Butt is a current Biomedical Informatics Master's program (MScBMI) student at UChicago. He received his Bachelor in Medicine, Bachelor in Surgery (MBBS) degree from the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan. He is interested in understanding computational methods as they apply to investigating genetic disorders. His current project investigates the role of DNA biophysical features in transcription factor binding.

Ben_Lai

Ben Lai

PhD student (co-supervised)

blai@ttic.edu

Ben (Boqiao) received his BS in Computer Science from Columbia University and BA in liberal arts study from Bard College. He joined the PhD program at Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago (TTIC) in 2018 and joined the lab in September 2020, jointly supervised by Dr. Jinbo Xu. He is interested in developing interpretable machine learning and statistical models to study biological sequences in various contexts.

Alumni

Wes

Wesley Crouse

Postdoc

Wes was a postdoc from Feb, 2021 to Oct, 2023, co-supervised by Dr. Matthew Stephens. Wes developed a method for making causal inference in human genetic association studies. After his postdoc, Wes joined Vesalius Therapeutics as a Statistical Genetics Scientist. 


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Siming Zhao

Postdoc

Siming Zhao was a postdoc, co-supervised by Dr. Matthew Stephens, from 2015 to 2021. She worked on statistical methods for analyzing somatic mutations in cancer, and for human genetic association data. She is now a tenure-track Assistant Professor at Dartmouth College.

jeanmorrison

Jean Morrison

Postdoc

Jean Morrison joined the lab in Oct, 2016 and was co-supervised by Dr. Matthew Stephens. Her work focused on methods for analyzing genetic data of multiple traits, including Mendelian Randomization. Jean is now a tenure-track Assistant Professor at Department of Biostatistics at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Yuwen_Liu

Yuwen Liu

Postdoc

Yuwen (刘毓文)  was a postdoc in the lab from July, 2015 to Jul, 2018. He is now a PI at Agricultural Genome Institute at Shenzhen, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

Shengtong

Shengtong Han

Postdoc

Shengtong Han was a postdoc in the lab from Apr, 2015 to Aug, 2018. He is now a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Biostatistics in Marquette University.

Yifan

Yifan Zhou

PhD student

zhouyf@uchicago.edu

Yifan Zhou (周逸凡)  was a student of the PhD program in Biophysical Sciences at University of Chicago (2016-2022). She was jointly supervised by Xin and Dr. Mengjie Chen. Yifan's thesis focused on the study of gene regulation in the context of neuropsychiatric diseases, and statistical methods for analyzing single-cell genomic screening data. Yifan is now working at GRAIL, a biotech. company.

Selewa_Alan

Alan Selewa

PhD student

Alan was a PhD student in Biophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago from 2016-2021. He joined the lab in September, 2017 and is jointly supervised by Dr. Oni Basu. His thesis work combines single-cell ‘omics data from heart and human genetic association data to shed light on the genetics of heart diseases, particularly atrial fibrillation.

Nick

Nicholas Knoblauch

PhD student

Nick was a PhD student of the Genetics, Genomics and Systems Biology (GGSB) program at U of Chicago from 2014 to 2020. His PhD work focused on developing and applying statistical methods to understand genetics of complex traits, particularly pre-term birth. Nick currently works at Genentech.

Bohan_Jiang

Bohan Jiang

MS student

bohjiang@uchicago.edu

Bohan Jiang was a master student in Computational and Applied Math (CAM) program at UChicago, and worked in Xin's lab in 2022-2023. Bohan's project used variable selection models to analyze copy number variations.

Qiao_Min

Min Qiao

Visiting student

qiaomin312@gmail.com

Min was a visiting PhD student from UTHealth at Houston. She worked in the lab from 2016 to 2020. Her work included statistical fine-mapping in genomewide association studies and analysis of copy number variants. She is now a staff scientist at Columbia University.

Will_Tang

Chenwei (Will) Tang

Undergraduate student

sxt1229@uchicago.edu

Will Tang (汤辰炜) was an undergraduate student double-major in Biology and Computer Science. He studied at the lab as a research assistant from 2021 to 2022. After graduation, Will joined Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to pursue a PhD in Biostatistics.

Christie_Du

Christie Du

Undergraduate student

Christie Du was an undergraduate, majoring in Biology and minoring in Computer Science. She worked in the lab from 2020-2021 as a research assistant. After graduated from Univ. of Chicago, she joined the Master program of Computer Science at Columbia Univ.

Yanyu Liang

Research assistant

yanyul@uchicago.edu

Yanyu Liang was a Research Assistant in the lab from 2016 to 2017. She did a rotation in the lab in the spring of 2018. She is now a student at Genomics and Systems Biology (GGSB) program, working in the lab of Haky Im.

Li_Zhongshan

Zhongshan Li

Visiting scholar

Zhongshan Li (李中山) visited the lab from Sep. 2017 - Sep. 2019 as a visiting scholar. He now works at the Institute of Genomic Medicine, Wenzhou Medical University. Zhongshan’s research focus on identification of pathogenic genetic mutations for human neuropsychiatric disorders using bioinformatics and statistics methods.

Yubin_Xie

Yubin Xie 

Research Assistant

Yubin Xie was a research assistant in the lab from October, 2016 to June, 2017. He is now a PhD student at Tri-Institutional PhD Program in Computational Biology & Medicine.

Ke_Tiffany2

Tiffany Ke

Visiting student

xinxinke294@uchicago.edu

Tiffany, Xinxin KE (柯欣欣) was a visiting student from School of Life Sciences, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She visited the lab from Oct, 2017 to Mar, 2018.