Dr. Yang Liu is a computational biologist with a solid background in human genetics and cancer genomics. He had PhD training at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, where he used computational approaches to study human genetic variations related to complex diseases. Afterwards, he received postdoctoral training in biostatistics at Harvard Statistics Department. While in Boston, he started to focus on computational cancer genomic research at Broad Institute and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, aiming for better understandings of cancer etiology and discoveries of potential vulnerabilities. In 2021, he joined the Department of Genetics and Genome Sciences at CWRU to continue his research.
We are interested in data mining of cancer genomes using computer programming and statistical modeling, aiming to understand cancer etiology and identify cancer vulnerabilities accordingly.
Research Information
Research Projects
Dr. Liu’s computational genomics lab studies cancers by using computer programing and statistical methods to analyze cancer genomic data and to develop new approaches based on understandings of cancer genomics and biology. For example, his lab uses cancer sequencing data to evaluate cancer-specific genome-wide features such as those related to chromosome instability to gain novel insights into cancer etiology. The research goal of Dr. Liu’s lab is to address common issues in current cancer precision medicine by pinpointing novel cancer targets and proposing biological hypotheses for the underlying mechanisms. Accordingly, his lab has developed computational approaches and identified several targets of therapeutic potential for cancers with specific genomic features. Based on those successful projects, Dr. Liu’s lab will extend research scope and make discoveries that can lead to more effective cancer therapies in the future.