Chongzhi Zang Lab                

Welcome

Welcome to the Zang Lab for Computational Biology and Functional Genomics at the University of Virginia. We are located in the Medical Center's West Complex (6th Floor), as a part of the Department of Genome Sciences (formally the Center for Public Health Genomics). We are also affiliated with the Departments of Biomedical Engineering, Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, and the UVA Comprehensive Cancer Center.

We are recruiting motivated students and scholars to work on various topics in computational and functional genomics in a collaborative research team. Postdocs, graduate and undergraduate students are all welcome. Please visit the Positions page for details.




Lab News

September 2024

Shengyuan gives a seminar talk at the 5th Annual Emerging Scholars in Genome Sciences Symposium.

Chongzhi R35 MIRA grant from NIGMS is renewed for 5 years.

Shawn's collaboration work with the Jie Sun Lab is published in Nature!

July 2024

Chongzhi is appointed as the inaugural Director of Computational Genomics at the UVA Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Center for Public Health Genomics, the lab's primary affiliation, has transitioned to the new Department of Genome Sciences, as the 9th research department in the UVA School of Medicine, effective July 17, 2024.

The press release about Mengxue's recent eLife paper is published at UVA Health Newsroom.

Chongzhi is selected as a Vivian Pinn Scholar by UVA School of Medicine. See news report here.

June 2024

Shengyuan and Hongpan each receives a Trainee Fellowship grant from UVA Comprehensive Cancer Center. Congratulations to both!

The Board of Visitors of UVA approves Chongzhi's tenure, effective July 1, 2024.

May 2024

Congratulations to Jingyi Wang on her graduation from UVA! She is among the less than 5% of undergraduate students who earned their degrees in 3 years. Jingyi will continue her PhD studies in the lab starting this summer. Way to go!

April 2024

Katherine Zhang, high school student volunteered in the lab in Summer 2022, will matriculate at UVA this fall as part of the Class of 2028. Congratulations and welcome back!

Hongpan, Shengyuan, Shawn, and Jingyi each presents a poster at the 2024 AACR Annual Meeting in San Diego, California.

Congratulation to Grant Atwood, who receives a Dean’s Undergraduate Engineering Research Fellowship to do research in the lab this summer!

Mengxue's replication origin data integration paper (final version) in collaboration with Anindya Dutta is published in eLife!

March 2024

Zhaoxia gives a poster presentation at Cold Spring Harbor Meeting on Systems Biology: Global Regulation of Gene Expression.

February 2024

Shengyuan and Zhaoxia each receives a Trainee Travel Award from the UVA Comprehensive Cancer Center, for their upcoming poster presentation at the AACR Annual Meeting and Cold Spring Harbor Meeting, respectively. Congratulations to both!

December 2023

Kudos to Mengxue, Zhaoxia, and Shawn for giving oral presentations, and to Hongpan and Shengyuan for presenting posters at the Commonwealth of Virginia Cancer Research Conference (CVCRC). Congratulations to Zhaoxia for winning a Best Speaker Award! Way to go everyone!

November 2023

The School of Medicine celebrates BIMS students for advancement to PhD candidacy. Congratulations to 3 Zang lab members, Zhaoxia, Mengxue, and Hongpan, on this milestone! See news and pictures here.

The lab receives a second pilot funding award from the UVA Cancer Center's Molecular Genetics and Epigenetics (GEN) program!

October 2023

Chongzhi gives a talk at Cold Spring Harbor Asia Meeting on Systems Biology of Gene Regulation and Genome Editing in Suzhou, China.

Zhaoxia gives an oral presentation at the annual BMG departmental retreat. Way to go!

August 2023

Mengxue and Zhenjia's replication origin analysis paper in collaboration with the Anindya Dutta Lab is published in eLife as a reviewed preprint. Look forward to the revision!

Qingying gives a talk at BMG Postdoc Symposium. Way to go Qingying!

Chongzhi receives an R21 grant from NIH!

Zhaoxia and Mengxue pass their qualifying exam and advance to PhD candidacy. Congratulations!

June 2023

The annual lab retreat is held at Lake Anna, Virginia. Joined by our keynote guest Dr. Jingyi Jessica Li from UCLA and collaborator Dr. Shan Yu from Statistics Department, lab members and families enjoy the breeze on the pontoon and kayaks.

Hongpan is awarded a Wagner Fellowship for the coming academic year. Congratulations!

Hongpan passes his PhD qualifying exam and advances to candidacy. Way to go Hongpan!

May 2023

The lab receives an administrative supplement grant to the NIH R35 MIRA award to support undergraduate student Jingyi Wang's summer research. Way to go Jingyi!

Chongzhi gives a talk at Cancer Genetics and Epigenetics Gordon Research Conference in Lucca, Italy.

April 2023

Shawn and Mengxue each presents a poster, while Chongzhi gives an invited talk, at the 2023 AACR Annual Meeting in Orlando, Florida.

February 2023

The lab receives a pilot funding award from the UVA Cancer Center's Molecular Genetics and Epigenetics (GEN) program!

November 2022

Press release about Shawn's recent SELMA paper is published at UVA Today and UVA Health Newsroom.

Mengxue gives an oral presentation at the BMG departmental retreat. Way to go!

September 2022

Shawn's SELMA paper is published in Nature Communications!

August 2022

The annual lab retreat is held in Hampton, Virginia. Lab members enjoy sunshine and seafoods at Buckroe Beach.

Press release about Hongpan and Shawn's recent Nature Communications paper is published at UVA Health Newsroom with news report at CBS19.

July 2022

Press release about Shawn's recent Nature Genetics paper is published at UVA Health Newsroom.

June 2022

The Board of Visitors of UVA officially approves Chongzhi's promotion to Associate Professor, effective July 1, 2022.

Billy's EPICS paper is accepted to Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal!

Hongpan publishes a "Behind the Paper" article at the Nature Portfolio Community website about the recent Nature Communications paper. Way to go!

May 2022

Congratulations to the graduating class of 2022! Ben Ke will stay at UVA and start his medical school training this fall. Kuki will pursue graduate studies at the University of Oxford. Way to go everyone!

Hongpan and Shawn's paper in collaboration with the Tae-Hee Kim Lab is accepted to Nature Communications!

April 2022

Shawn's paper in collaboration with the Clint Miller Lab is accepted to Nature Genetics!

March 2022

Dr. Shengyuan Wang joins the lab as Postdoctoral Research Associate. Welcome Shengyuan!

Hongpan, Yidan, and Billy each presents a poster at Cold Spring Harbor Meeting on Systems Biology: Global Regulation of Gene Expression.

February 2022

Shawn's Nature Immunology paper is published online with press release at UVA Today and news report at CBS19.

January 2022

Zhenjia is honored on the list of UVA researchers with outstanding research contributions in 2021!

Shawn's paper in collaboration with the Hai-Hui Xue Lab is accepted to Nature Immunology!

November 2021

Shawn gives a seminar talk at Emerging Scholars in Genome Sciences Symposium organized by CPHG.

Press release about Zhenjia's Nature paper with the Hao Jiang Lab is featured at UVA Today.

Ben gives a presentation at the MoTrPAC consortium subcommittee virtual meeting.

September 2021

First-year BIMS PhD student Zhaoxia Ma joins the lab. Welcome Zhaoxia!

Zhenjia's collaboration work with the Hao Jiang Lab is published in Nature!

Shawn and Mengxue each presents a poster at Cold Spring Harbor Meetings on Mechanisms of Eukaryotic Transcription and Eukaryotic DNA Replication & Genome Maintenance.

August 2021

The first lab retreat is held at Thomson Farm in Leesburg, Virginia. Lab members explore Harpers Ferry by hiking and boating.

In collaboration with Drs. Aidong Zhang and Stefan Bekiranov, Chongzhi receives a medium grant from NSF as a co-PI.

June 2021

Chongzhi serves as a mentor at the 2020-2021 Biomedical Data Science Innovation Lab.

May 2021

Congratulations to Chris for starting a new position as pathology fellow at the National Cancer Institute!

Congratulations to the Class of 2021! Zack will start his PhD studies at the University of Southern California; Xinyue will pursue a master in biostatistics at Yale; Alex will work at a biomedical technology startup in Charlottesville; and Sophie will be a postbac IRTA research fellow at NIH! Best wishes to all!

News release about Zhenjia, Zack, and Wenjing's recent BART papers can be found at UVA Today.

Zhenjia, Shawn, Zack, and Billy present posters at the 2021 NHLBI Systems Biology Symposium.

Chongzhi gives an invited seminar at New York University's Center for the Investigation of Environmental Hazards.

Alex and Zack present their Capstone project "a computational pipeline for studying functional genome organization" at the 2021 BME Capstone Symposium. Way to go Alex and Zack!

April 2021

Chongzhi gives an invited talk at the Foundations of Biomedical Data Science Seminar Series. The video is available here.

March 2021

Chongzhi gives an invited talk at Duke University's Center for Genomic and Computational Biology.

Zhenjia's BART3D paper is accepted to Bioinformatics!

Wenjing and Zhenjia's BARTweb paper is accepted to NAR Genomics and Bioinformatics!

February 2021

Zack's paper on BART Cancer web resource is accepted to NAR Cancer!

January 2021

Chongzhi receives a UVA Research Excellence Award! See the news report and video below!

Three new members join the lab: BIMS rotations student Jamel Simpson, postdoctoral associates Qingying Chen and Billy Lamberti! Welcome Jamel, Qingying, and Billy!

The Quantitative Biology journal features Chongzhi's recent publication with a cover image.

October 2020

Media reports about the lab's cancer CTCF research are released at UVA Today and local news CBS19!

Chongzhi receives a grant from Virginia Commonwealth Medical Research Board (CHRB)!

The lab welcomes BIMS rotation student Jose Verdezoto!

September 2020

Zhenjia gives a talk at Emerging Scholars in Genome Sciences Symposium Series organized by CPHG.

Our cancer CTCF paper is published in Genome Biology. Congratulations Zhenjia!

Our collaboration paper on histone H3 variant activity with Chunyuan Jin and Max Costa at NYU is published in iScience. Congratulations Zhenjia, Wuwei and Rongquan!

August 2020

Zhenjia's paper on cancer CTCF is accepted to Genome Biology!

July 2020

Zack Thomas presents a poster at ISMB 2020 virtual meeting. Way to go!

Dr. Zhenjia Wang receives a Trainee Fellowship Grant from UVA Cancer Center. Congratulations Zhenjia!

The lab welcomes BIMS rotation student Audrey Putelo!

June 2020

Chongzhi co-chairs a Minisymposium on Transcriptional Gene Regulation in Cancer at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Virtual Annual Meeting 2020.

May 2020

The lab receives an NIH administrative supplement to the R35 award to support Zack Thomas's undergraduate summer research. Way to go Zack!

Congratulations to the graduating Class of 2020!

Aaron Ho receives The Royal Society of Chemistry Certificate of Excellence, an award given each year to a graduating student to recognize an outstanding academic and research career. Congratulations Aaron! Way to go!

April 2020

Shawn's paper in collaboration with the Hai-Hui Xue Lab is published in Cellular & Molecular Immunology!

Mengxue Tian and Hongpan Zhang accept offers from the Biomedical Sciences (BIMS) graduate program and will start PhD studies in the lab this fall. Welcome again Mengxue and Hongpan!

March 2020

Celina Shih, the lab's first summer undergraduate student, will join the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory as a bioinformatician, after graduating from Hopkins this Spring. Congratulations Celina!

The lab starts operating remotely on March 9, 2020, with all lab members working from home, as a proactive response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

December 2019

Zhenjia's collaboration project with the Suresh Cuddapah lab is published in Epigenetics & Chromatin.

November 2019

Zhenjia and Shawn present posters at the NCI Chromosome Biology Symposium.

The lab welcomes undergraduate students Anvitha Chimata and Drew Vanichkachorn!

October 2019

Ruoyao Shi, undergraduate student from Jilin University, and Hongpan Zhang, recent graduate from Sichuan University, join the lab. Welcome Ruoyao and Hongpan!

September 2019

The lab welcomes undergraduate students Minaal Khan and Cameron Her!

Chongzhi receives an R35 (Maximizing Investigators' Research Award, MIRA) grant from NIH!

August 2019

Chongzhi gives invited talks at Shandong University in Jinan, State Key Laboratory of Cardiovascular Disease at Peking Union Medical College, and the 14th International Bioinformatics Workshop (IBW 2019) in Beijing, during his visit in China.

Shawn gives a poster presentation at the 38th Summer Symposium in Molecular Biology at Penn State University.

July 2019

The lab welcomes undergraduate student Nathan Lee!

May 2019

The lab welcomes undergraduate student Courtney Laughlin and NSF REU summer student Sekou Lowe!

Shawn gives a talk at 2019 BMG Postdoc Symposium.

5 Lab members give poster presentations at the RECOMB 2019 meeting in Washington, DC. Way to go Zhenjia, Shawn, Jeffrey, Wenjing, and Yifan!

Jeffrey Yoo receives a Small Research and Travel Grant from UVA College of Arts and Sciences, for presenting a poster at RECOMB 2019. Congratulations Jeffrey!

April 2019

The Zang Lab welcomes undergraduate students Leyao Li, Megan Grieco, Xinyue Qiu, and Zack Thomas!

Zhenjia presents a poster at AACR Annual Meeting 2019 in Atlanta, GA.

February 2019

The Zang Lab welcomes undergraduate students Ben Ke, Sophie Park, Maggie Bujor, and Ishaan Dey!

December 2018

Zhenjia and Shawn present posters at 2018 Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics Departmental Retreat.

November 2018

BART web interface (beta version) is released! Upload a gene list, and let us predict what transcription factors might regulate them through enhancers.

October 2018

Chongzhi is inducted into the MilliPub Club, which honors UVA School of Medicine faculty members who have authored a single paper that has been cited over 1,000 times.

A lab showcase video is released. See above! Thanks Yayi Feng and Raven Chen!

September 2018

The lab welcomes visiting scholar Gang Chen, UVA master student Andrew Lee, undergraduate students Zhou Lu, Sarah Kang, Chuanchuan He, and Allison Ryu!

August 2018

Yifan Zhang, PhD student in the BME program, joins the lab. Welcome Yifan!

Chongzhi receives an award from the Jayne Koskinas Ted Giovanis Foundation for Health and Policy, for his proposal presented at the BD2K 2018 Data Science Innovation Lab!

July 2018

Jiangxue Han, first year master student in Data Science Institute, joins the lab. Welcome Jiangxue!

Chongzhi receives a grant from Phi Beta Psi Charity Trust Fund!

May 2018

Dr. Sheng'en Shawn Hu receives a fellowship grant from UVA Cancer Center Trainee Support RFA. Congratulations Shawn!

Zhenjia, Shawn, and Wen each presents a poster at 2018 UVA Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics Annual Symposium. Way to go!

UVA rising second-year student Alexander An joins the lab. Welcome Alex!

April 2018

Zhenjia gives a talk at 2018 BMG Postdoc Symposium.

Visiting scholar Rong-quan He, oncologist and PhD candidate from Guangxi Medical University in China, and UVA students Yushan Feng and Naifei Pan join the lab. Welcome everyone!

March 2018

Zhenjia's BART paper is accepted to Bioinformatics!

February 2018

UVA undergraduate students Jeffrey Yoo, Mike Ferguson, Yuantao Chen, and visting student Wen Shen from Nanjing University join the lab. Welcome everyone!

January 2018

The Zang Lab welcomes visiting student Qi Li, PhD candidate in statistics from Tsinghua University, and UVA undergraduate students Stephany Perez, Javier Valcarcel, and John Zhang!

December 2017

Chongzhi receives an American Cancer Society Institutional Research Grant (ACS IRG).

November 2017

A new lab member, Dr. Sheng'en Shawn Hu, joins us as Postdoctoral Research Associate. Welcome Shawn!

Chongzhi gives an invited seminar talk at the Department of Biostatistics, Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.

Zhenjia presents a poster at the Harvard Program in Quantitative Genomics (PQG) Conference in Boston.

October 2017

Zhenjia presents a poster at the 2017 NHLBI Systems Biology Symposium.

September 2017

Chongzhi gives invited seminar talks at the CAS-MPG Partner Institute for Computational Biology in Shanghai, Tsinghua University, Peking University, Beijing University of Technology, and the Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, during his visit in China.

Yayi Feng, UVA second-year student, joins the lab as a research volunteer. Welcome Yayi!

July 2017

Yiren Wang joins the lab as a research assistant. Welcome Yiren!

May 2017

The Zang lab welcomes summer students Wuwei Tan and Celina Shih!

January 2017

Dr. Zhenjia Wang joins the lab as Postdoctoral Research Associate. Welcome Zhenjia!




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—Thomas Jefferson, 1799



Last modified: September 30, 2024