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
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 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
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.
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
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.
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
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 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
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
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.
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.
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
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 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 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.