LAB MEMBERS

ZHAI WeiWei, I am an evolutionary geneticist focusing on using statistical and computational approaches in addressing questions in Population Genetics and Molecular Evolution. With recent experiences in genomics, my research interests include these directions:1) Cancer genomics, especially the origin and distribution of intra-tumor heterogeneity in lung and liver cancers. I am interested in bringing population genetics, single cell genomics and stem biology to the study of cancer evolution. 2) in the natural world, I am interested in the evolution of dogs and influenza. The major interest for us is understanding how species adapt to the environment.

CHEN Hui, I got my undergraduate training in Bioinformatics from Soochow University, P.R.C. After that, I pursued my PhD (2009 - 2013) at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. During my PhD, I mainly focused on studying the host cell transcriptomic changes in different cell lines infected with different influenza viruses. In parallel, I also helped establishing a pathogen-diagnostic system collaborating with Singapore national lab. After joining Dr. Zhai Weiwei's lab in 2013,the major scientific question we want to address in the past two years is how influenza virus adapts to human hosts. We applied a likelihood-based method for mapping mutations on phylogeny. Recently, I start to pick up sequence analysis of next generation sequence data and I am hoping to expose myself more to population genetic theories in the near future.

ZHANG Tong, Postdoctoral Fellow. Tong received his Ph.D. in Structural Biology from School of Biological Sciences, Nanyang Technological University (2015), where he focused on understanding the mechanism of inhibitors against Alzheimer’s Disease using computer simulations. Prior to his Ph.D., he received his B.S. in Biology from School of Biological Sciences, Nanyang Technological University (2010). Tong joined our lab on Nov, 2014. Since then, Tong was studying the intra-tumour heterogeneity in Asian Lung and Liver Cancers.

Deng Qiang, Graduate Student. He is now a CS Master student from Beijing Institute of Genomics,Chinese Academy of Sciences. He received his B.S. in Biology (2013) from Chinese Agricultural University. Qiang joined the lab in September 2014. His research focuses on population genetics, data mining and natural language processing. He is finishing his degree in summer 2016.

Jia Qi LIM, I'm an undergraduate student doing internship in this lab. This internship allows me to gain real- world experience that are perhaps not found in textbooks. I am focusing on the cancer genomics, in particular the identification and validation of fusion gene and its association with Liver cancer. My aim is to contribute to better Liver cancer identification and clinical outcome through the discovery of the research project.

Teck Por LIM, Postdoc Fellow, Tech Por received his degree in Electrical Engineering, as well as MEng in Electrical Engineering from National University of Singapore (NUS). After publishing in physics journals, he was bitten by the research “bug” and went on to do a PhD (2012) in mathematical biology at Imperial College under the supervision of Jaroslav Stark. His PhD was focused on developing models of follicle populations from ovary data. Subsequently, he went on to do a postdoc in the biological sciences department of NUS (2013-2015) under Greg Tucker-Kellogg, where he worked on bioinformatics (miRNA and ChIP-seq data) and data analysis. Research interests: Quantitative or statistical methods related to biological data, Tumour growth, RNA expression and Cell proliferation. Teck por is working on understanding the RNA profiles of Asian lung cancers.

ZHANG Yilu, Research Officer. CurrentlyYilue is working on the lung cancer project. He is interested in the metastasis of cancer and how does the cancer cell interact with microenviroment ,drug and self-immune system. He holds a master degree of mechanical engineering from NTU.

ALUMNI

Yang Hechuan, I got my bachelor degree in Biotechnology from Jilin University in 2008. I then began to pursue Ph.D in Genetics at the University of Science and Technology of China. During my elaborate research expedition, I spent 4 years (2009.9 to 2013.8) at Beijing Institute of Genomics (CAS), as a visiting student. I then spent one year, from 2014.11, at Genome Institute of Singapore as a visiting student. After returning to China, I continued my studies in Kunming Institute of Zoology (CAS). The focus of my research over all these years has been on using genomic data to solve the mysteries enshrouding dog domestication.

Li Ying, graduate student in the group from 2011-2014. Ying has an undergraduate degree from Harbin Medical University with a major in Bioinformatics. Her thesis is on studying the relationship between positively selected gene and gene networks. After graduation, she went to work for SinoPath (http://www.sinopath.cn/). She focuses on analysing second generation sequencing data for clinical and disease testing.