I am a Bioinformatics Ph.D. candidate in Dr. Vivek Swarup’s lab at the University of California, Irvine. My research focuses on leveraging statistical methods, single-cell multi-omics, and computational modeling to investigate the molecular mechanisms of Alzheimer’s disease, with the long-term goal of identifying new therapeutic targets.
Before starting my Ph.D., I graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a degree in Biotechnology. I then worked as a research specialist in Dr. Lewis Chodosh’s lab at the University of Pennsylvania, where I contributed to developing treatments for recurrent breast cancer. There, I performed hands-on drug efficacy studies and applied statistical analyses across four preclinical trials. My earlier research experience includes siRNA knockdowns, flow cytometry, tissue culture, and other molecular biology approaches that helped shape my interest in biomedical science.
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. -- Samuel Beckett
Research Interests
- Statistical methods of genomics data
- RNA-seq, scRNA-seq data and multi-omics
- Statistical genetics
- Empirical Bayes methods
- Causal inference methods
Skills
- R - package development, data analaysis and visualization
- Python - data analaysis and statistical procedures
- SQL - MySQL
- High Performance Computing - slurm
- UNIX commands and bash script writing
- Git
Personal News
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Nov 2025 – 🚨 Our new paper is out in Science Advances! We mapped single-cell regulatory landscapes in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Pick’s disease (PiD) to uncover how distinct enhancer and transcription factor programs shape disease-specific vulnerability. ✨ 😄 🧠
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October 2024 – ZeChuan presented his research talk “In Silico Module Perturbation Analysis unlocks a functional understanding of the dynamic gene networks in single-cell data” at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) Annual Meeting 2024 in Denver, CO.
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Sep 2022 – ZeChuan released ArchRtoSignac, an object conversion package he developed for seamless integration between ArchR and Signac.
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July 2022 – ZeChuan presented his research talk “Single-nucleus open chromatin accessibility landscape of Pick's and Alzheimer's disease” at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference (AAIC) 2022 in San Diego, CA.