Advisory Board and Editors Medical Genetics
Ali Torkamani
Dr. Torkamani obtained his undergraduate degree in chemistry at Stanford University, where he received a Bing Foundation Chemistry Research Fellowship, and his doctorate in biomedical sciences at the University of California, San Diego under the mentorship of Dr. Nicholas Schork as an NIH Genetics Predoctoral Training awardee. In 2008, he joined the Scripps Translational Science Institute as a Research Scientist and Donald C. and Elizabeth M. Dickinson Fellow, and shortly thereafter as an Assistant Professor of Molecular and Experimental Medicine and Mario R. Alvarez Fellow. As an Assistant Professor Dr. Torkamani received a Blasker Science and Technology and PhRMA Foundation Award. In 2012, Dr. Torkamani advanced to Director of Genome Informatics at STSI where he leads various human genome sequencing and other genomics initiatives. Dr. Torkamani is also co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Cypher Genomics, Inc.
Dr. Torkamani’s research covers a broad range of areas centered on the use of genomic technologies to identify the genetic etiology and underlying mechanisms of human disease in order to define precision therapies for diseased individuals. Major focus areas include human genome interpretation and genetic dissection of novel rare diseases, predictive genomic signatures of response to therapy – especially cancer therapy, and novel sequencing-based assays as biomarkers of disease.
Brett Trost
Dr. Brett Trost is a Scientist in the Molecular Medicine Program at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada. He is a computational biologist with a particular interest in human genetics.
Ece Uzun
Dr. Ece Uzun is the Director of Clinical Bioinformatics at Lifespan Academic Medical Center and Assistant Professor at the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Brown University Alpert Medical School. In her clinical work, Dr. Uzun focuses on building bioinformatics analysis pipelines, developing algorithms, tools and databases to aid in clinical variant detection and annotation. In addition to her clinical work, Dr. Uzun's research group develops novel algorithms to analyze big data and gene networks with a focus on complex disorders such as cancer and neurodevelopmental disorders.
Ranjit Vijayan
Dr. Ranjit Vijayan obtained his PhD in Life Sciences Interface/Biochemistry from the University of Oxford, UK, and his DipGrad in Management from the London School of Economics & Political Science, University of London, UK. In 2004 Dr Vijayan obtained his MSc in Computer Science from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK, and prior to this his BEng in Electrical & Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
Dr. Vijayan's research interests include; molecular dynamics simulations of biological macromolecules, protein structure modeling, structure based drug discovery, genomics & transcriptomics, pharmacogenomics and high-performance computing.
Shibiao Wan
Dr. Shibiao Wan is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Genetics, Cell Biology and Anatomy, and the Co-Director for the Bioinformatics and Systems Biology (BISB) PhD Program at University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC). He is also an Assistant Professor (courtesy) in the Department of Biostatistics at UNMC.
With more than 15 years of experience in machine learning, bioinformatics, and computational biology, Dr. Wan has published >50 articles in top-tiered journals such as Genome Research, Nature Communications, Science Advances, Circulation Research, Briefings in Bioinformatics, and Bioinformatics. Dr. Wan is the Editor-in-Chief for Current Proteomics, and an Associate Editor/Academic Editor/Editorial Board Member for a series of prestigious journals such as Briefings in Functional Genomics, Heliyon, BMC Bioinformatics, International Journal of Microbiology, PeerJ Computer Science, BioMed Research International, and Computational and Mathematical Methods, and a guest associate editor for multiple high-impact journals.
He is a Scientific Program Committee (SPC) member for American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) Annual Symposium and a Technical Program Committee (TPC) member for >20 machine learning related international conferences including IEEE ICTAI. Dr. Wan is also a reviewer for >70 prestigious journals including Nature Biotechnology, Nature Methods, Nature Communications, Nature Computational Science, Science Advances, Nucleic Acids Research, Advanced Science, Cancer Research, Genome Biology, and Genome Medicine. Dr. Wan has received a number of accolades including the Springer Nature Editor of Distinction Award in 2025 by Springer Nature, the New Investigator Award in 2024 by UNMC, the FIRST Award in 2023 by Nebraska EPSCoR, the Outstanding Young Alumni Award in 2022 by HK PolyU as well as the Global Peer Review Awards (top 1%) in “Cross-Field” and “Biology and Biochemistry” in 2019 by Clarivate. Dr. Wan is a member of AACR, AMIA, ISCB and ACM and an IEEE Senior Member.
Albert HC Wong
Albert H.C. Wong is a neuroscientist and psychiatrist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, and a Professor at the University of Toronto. He attended medical school at the University of Toronto, where he also completed specialty training in psychiatry and a PhD in neurobiology. Dr. Wong’s lab uses animal models and clinical studies to investigate genetic, epigenetic and developmental mechanisms of psychiatric disease. His areas of clinical expertise are in schizophrenia and brain stimulation.
Joseph C Wu
Joseph C. Wu, MD, PhD is Director of the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute and Simon H. Stertzer Professor of Medicine (Cardiology) and Radiology at the Stanford School of Medicine. Dr. Wu received his MD from Yale University School of Medicine. He trained in internal medicine and cardiology at UCLA followed by a PhD in the Dept of Molecular Pharmacology. His clinical interests involve cardiovascular imaging and adult congenital heart disease. His lab works on biological mechanisms of patient-specific and disease-specific induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). The main goals are to (i) understand basic cardiovascular disease mechanisms, (ii) accelerate drug discovery and screening, (iii) develop “clinical trial in a dish” concept, and (iv) implement precision cardiovascular medicine for prevention and treatment of patients. His lab uses a combination of genomics, stem cells, cellular & molecular biology, physiological testing, and molecular imaging technologies to better understand molecular and pathophysiological processes.
Venkata Yellapantula
Bioinformatician currently at Memorial Loan Kettering Cancer Center with 10 years of experience in analyzing high-throughput genomic and proteomic data. I have a diverse background in handling raw exome & whole genome sequencing, RNA-Seq and ChIP-Seq data to identify genetic aberrations. Proficient in development and implementing pipelines and algorithms and post analysis of aberrations identified through individual assays to glean novel biological patterns. Led large-scalegenomic efforts such as MMRF CoMMpass trial, ICGC & TCGA.
Jian Zhang
Dr. Jian Zhang currently works at the Division of Gastrointestinal Surgery & Gastric Cancer Center, The First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University. Jian does research in Genetics/Epigenetics and Cancer Research. He is also the editorial board member of Frontiers in Oncology and Frontiers in Bioinformatics.
Xin Zhang
Dr. Xin Zhang is Department Director and Principal Investigator of the Clinical Experimental Center at Jiangmen Central Hospital (China). He received his Ph.D. in Molecular Medicine from Sun Yat-sen University in 2016. Dr. Zhang is an enthusiastic, early career scientist involved in interdisciplinary training and has a strong biological background, including molecular pathology, molecular diagnostics, and molecular pharmacology. His current research interests mainly focus on the molecular mechanism of tumor recurrence and metastasis, clinical application of molecular diagnosis, and molecular pharmacological mechanism of traditional Chinese medicine in potential therapeutic application of cancer.