Team

Principal Investigator

Zechen Chong, Ph.D.

Tenured Associate Professor of Genome Sciences, University of Virginia
Assistant Professor, then tenured Associate Professor and Vice Chair for Bioinformatics Research, University of Alabama at Birmingham, through 2026
Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, March 2017
Ph.D., Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, June 2013

Lab Members

Kaili Hu, M.D., MPH

Ph.D. Candidate

Kaili is a UAB graduate student in the Cell, Molecular, and Developmental Biology theme. She graduated from the Ningbo University School of Medicine and completed her residency at Ningbo University Affiliated Hospital. To pursue further research training, she came to the United States and earned an MPH in epidemiology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her research focuses on long-read sequencing data analysis.

Yuwei Song, M.S.

Ph.D. Candidate

Yuwei is a UAB graduate student in the Genetics, Genomics, and Bioinformatics theme. She graduated from the University of Manitoba with a master’s degree in science. From 2019 to 2021, she worked as a research scholar in the UAB Department of Dermatology. Her research focuses on transcriptome analysis using third-generation sequencing data.

Zishan Peng, M.S., M.D.

Ph.D. Candidate

Zishan is a graduate student in the Biomedical Sciences (BIMS) Graduate Program at UVA. She earned her Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery degree from China Medical University and a master’s degree in pathology from Fudan University. From 2021 to 2023, she worked as a research fellow at the Vascular Medicine Institute at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research focuses on structural variation analysis using long-read sequencing data.

Chia Hsuan Fan, M.S.

Data Information Coordinator

Chia-Hsuan is a staff member in the lab. He graduated from the University of Alabama at Birmingham with a master’s degree in biotechnology. From 2023 to 2024, he completed an internship in the Department of Biomedical Informatics and Data Science. He develops algorithms for analyzing mitochondrial DNA using third-generation sequencing data.

Alumni

Fengyuan Huang, graduate student, 2019.03–2023.08
Meghan Moody, undergraduate student, 2021.01–2023.05, now a graduate student at Baylor College of Medicine
Yu Chen, graduate student, 2018.03–2022.12, now a Scientist in Computational Genomics at Bristol Myers Squibb
Jenna Ziad Taer, undergraduate intern, 2022.08–2022.11
Zhengzhi Tan, master’s student intern, 2021.11–2022.10
Ethan Vallely, undergraduate intern, 2020.09–2022.08, now at the University of South Alabama College of Medicine
Shamza Manzoor, MSMBS intern, 2022.01–2022.08
Debbie X. Fu, undergraduate intern, 2022.01–2022.05
Guy Twa, GGB rotation student, 2021.10–2021.12
Stephanie Cook, undergraduate intern, 2020.12–2021.08
Yiqing Wang, Ph.D. student, 2020.01–2021.05
Shaurita Hutchins, GGB rotation student, 2021.01–2021.03
Santhosh Kumar Karthikeyan, GBS rotation student, 2020.09–2020.12
Weisheng Chen, GBS rotation student, 2020.09–2020.12
Katrina Whitten, undergraduate intern, 2020.09–2020.12
Colton Miller, master’s student intern, 2020.02–2020.07
Peng Xu, postdoctoral fellow, 2017.09–2019.09, now an instructor at Mount Sinai
Ari Ginsparg, GGB rotation student, 2019.10–2019.12
Yixin Zhang, undergraduate intern, UAB Computer Science, 2019.02–2019.05
Mary Bunton, undergraduate intern, 2018.10–2018.12
Ming Ye, Associate Professor, Southwest University, China, visiting scientist, 2017.10–2018.10