Faculty & Staff

Han Liang, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair ad interim
Barnhart Family Distinguished Professor in Targeted Therapies
HLiang1@MDAnderson.org

Liang Laboratory

Research Interests:

• Developing AI-driven bioinformatics tools
• Characterizing tumor-intrinsic vulnerabilities for cancer therapy
• Characterizing tumor-microenvironment vulnerabilities for cancer therapy
• RNA modification in cancer development and therapy

Rehan Akbani, Ph.D.
Professor
RAkbani@MDAnderson.org

Research Interests:

• Batch effects analysis and quality control of -omics data
• Reverse phase protein arrays (RPPA) data analysis
• Metabolomics data analysis
• Visualization of large -omics datasets

Han Chen, Ph.D.
Instructor
HChen12@MDAnderson.org

Research Interests:

• Investigating the trade-offs in cancer evolution to uncover resulting vulnerabilities
• Leveraging enhancer RNAs to connect genotypes with phenotypes
• Identifying actionable protein targets in rare cancer subtypes

Ken Chen, Ph.D.
Professor
KChen3@MDAnderson.org

Ken Chen Laboratory

Research Interests:

• Molecular characterization of cancer evolution/therapy using high-throughput technologies
• Functional target and biomarker identification
• Knowledge integration for automating research and medicine

Yiwen Chen, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
YChen26@MDAnderson.org

Research Interests:

• Computational and AI-powered translatomics: Development and application of computational and AI methods for analyzing bulk and spatially resolved single-cell translatomics data
• Computational proteogenomics: Development and application of computational and AI approaches for proteogenomic data analysis
• Multi-omics integration: Developing computational frameworks and systems biology strategies for integrative analysis across diverse -omics layers
• RNA-mediated regulatory networks in cancer: Integration of computational and functional genomics to uncover RNA-based regulatory circuits driving tumorigenesis, anti-tumor immunity, cancer immunotherapy response and therapeutic resistance

Anil Korkut, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
AKorkut@MDAnderson.org

Research Interests:

• Machine learning applications in precision oncology
• Translational bioinformatics and cancer genomics
• Spatial proteomics

Vakul Mohanty
Instructor
VMohanty@MDAnderson.org

Xiaoping Su, Ph.D.
Professor
XSu1@MDAnderson.org

Research Interests:

• Identifying genetic alteration patterns in the cancer genome by NGS data
• Spatial transcriptomics (ST) analysis for cancer studies
• Integrative analysis of snRNA-Seq and snATAC-Seq
• Microbiome detection in cancer samples

Jing Wang, Ph.D.
Professor
JingWang@MDAnderson.org

Research Interests:

• Analytical, translational bioinformatics and computational biology
• Developing and applying computational methods to cancer “multi-omics” data analysis, including:
  • Computational analysis of high-throughput cancer “multi-omics” data
  • Development and application of deep learning, machine learning and statistical algorithms for classification, regression, prediction and validation
  • Discovery of cancer diagnostic, prognostic and therapeutic biomarkers
  • Extracting pathway and functional insights from cancer “multi-omics” data

Tao Wang, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
TWang10@MDAnderson.org

Tao Wang Laboratory

Research Interests:

• Big data approaches to immunology
• Predictive modeling for highly impactful biomedical questions
• Methodological development to analyze spatial transcriptomics data
• Developing online webservers and portals for the research community

Wenyi Wang, Ph.D.
Professor
WWang7@MDAnderson.org

Statistical Bioinformatics Laboratory

Research Interests:

• Multi-omic deconvolution for DNA/RNA dynamics, risk prediction and AI
  

John N. Weinstein, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor
Hubert L. Stringer Chair in Cancer Research
JWeinste@MDAnderson.org

Research Interests:

• -Omics/multi-omics in cancer research
• Artificial intelligence, large language models and natural language processing in cancer research
• Novel, dynamically interactive data visualizations in cancer research (including next-generation clustered heat maps)
• Analysis, visualization, diagnosis and mitigation of batch effects in large cancer datasets

Ye Zheng, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
YZheng8@MDAnderson.org

Zheng Laboratory

Research Interests:

• Epigenomics profiling and FFPE specimen genomic profiling
• Multi-modality genomic modeling and analysis of epigenomics, 3D genomics, proteomics and transcriptomics
• Statistical genomics and computational oncology using traditional and modern computational tools

Zhicheng Zhou, Ph.D.
Instructor
ZZhou2@MDAnderson.org

Research Interests:

• Cancer immunotherapy
• High-throughput assays for drug development
• Regulation of RNA editing