WHERE COMPUTER GEEKS HAVE A CRUSH ON THE HUMAN GENOME
The Dong Lab is a team of researchers at Yale University dedicated to answering important questions in genome biology and brain diseases with both computational and experimental methods. We focus on studying transcriptional regulation and non-coding RNAs and their roles in neurodegenerative diseases through developing computational methods to integrate and analyze multi-omics and clinical data.
Highlights
Our Research
We study (1) transcriptional regulation, incl. discovery of regulatory elements in the human genome and how they contribute to gene expression; (2) non-coding RNAs (such as eRNA, circRNA, piRNA, miRNA) and their role in neurological diseases; and (3) AI in precision medicine by integrating multi-model data (e.g. omics, clinical, imaging, and wearable device) and the latest machine learning methods to predict disease diagnosis and progression.
Our Projects
We live on collaboration. In most time, we talk to the front-end doctors or biologists and understand their questions. We use public-available datasets or generate our own data. We develop computational methods or tools to solve the problem (hopefully) and very often we enjoy the fun of new discovery together.
Our Team
We are a team of enthusiastic researchers that enjoy the marriage of genome research and data science. We strive to build a learning environment for interdisciplinary research, and recognize the value of diversity in the process of discovery.
News
Welcome two talent high schooler, Sophia Kong and Christopher Zhang, joining the lab as a summer intern! (6/1/2025)
Congratulations to Dr. Maria I. Olivero-Acosta for receiving a two-year APDA Postdoc Fellowship (2025-2027)!! (5/30/2025)
Congratulations to Qingru Xu for receiving a PhD offer from UCLA! (2/27/2025)
Congratulations to Deep Patel for receiving a Yale CBB MS Summer Internship program!! (1/14/2025)
Welcome Dr. Ruifeng Hu returning to the team as an Associate Research Scientist after leaving for an indurstrial job for a year! (1/1/2025)
Welcome Dr. Weiqiang “Leo” Liu from Chinese Academy of Sciences joining the lab as a postdoc research associate! (10/1/2024)
Welcome Dr. Himanshu Chintalapudi joining the lab as a Associate Research Scientist! (10/1/2024)
Welcome William Xu from Naikai University joining the lab as a postgraduate assistant! (8/22/2024)
Welcome Deep Patel joining the lab as a Master student from Yale master program! (8/10/2024)
Welcome Dr. Maria I. Olivero-Acosta from Purdue University joining the lab as a postdoc reserach associate! (8/5/2024)
Welcome Zehao Jin from Tsinghua University joining the lab as a summer student! (7/1/2024)
Yeah! Our lab was moved to Yale! (6/30/2024)
Dr. Dong was invited by the American Parkinson Disease Association (APDA) to share his research to the PD community in Chinese mandarin (post link and YouTube video). (6/14/2024)
Congratulations to Rosan Wang for receiving offers from UCSD’s Bioinformatics and Systems Biology PhD program! (2/27/2024)
Congratulations to Lucy Tian for receiving a PhD offer from Cornell University! (2/28/2024)
Congratulations to Rosan Wang that her work about “Identifying enhancer RNAs in blood and their immunological role for Parkinson’s disease” was invited by FNIH to present at the Inaugural Accelerating Medicines Partnership® (AMP®) Program Symposium in Bethesda, Maryland, celebrating the AMP program’s 10th anniversary. Dr Dong will present the work on behalf of the team! (2/5/2024)
Welcome Dr. Mingming Lu joining the lab as a postdoc reserach fellow! (1/16/2024)
Welcome Yuxuan Hu from China Pharmaceutical University joining the lab as a visiting student! (10/18/2023)
Congratulations to Dr. Jie Yuan that his abstract entitled “The Parkinson’s Cell Atlas: A spatial map of disease programs in human brains” has been selected for a platform oral presentation at the 2023 American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, from November 1-5! (8/2/2023)