Yang (Eric) Li, PhD, receives first R35 to interpret human genetic variants via AI/ML and comparative genomics

Li poster

Yang (Eric) Li, PhD, an assistant professor of genetics and neurosurgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has received a five-year Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA, R35) from the National Institutes of Health, to develop computational approaches for understanding how gene regulation differs between humans and animal models and how those differences may affect the study of human disease.

Yang Li, PhD, awarded prestigious ALSF ‘A’ Award Grant for pediatric brain tumor research

The Department of Genetics is proud to announce that Yang Li, PhD, Assistant Professor of Genetics and Neurosurgery, has been selected as a recipient of the 2025 Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation (ALSF) ‘A’ Award Grant for his groundbreaking work in childhood cancer research. The award provides $800,000 in total funding over four years, supporting Dr. Li’s efforts to advance understanding of aggressive pediatric brain tumors.

Dr. Yang (Eric) Li’s First-authored Paper Published in Nature

As part of NIH’s BRAIN Initiative, Nature recently published 10 papers mapping the first mammalian brain. Genetics Assistant Professor Dr. Yang (Eric) Li, a contributor in this project, co-first-authored one of the Nature papers titled: Single-cell analysis of chromatin accessibility in the adult mouse brain. Li has also contributed to two other papers in this […]

Detailed cell maps of the human brain bring new treatment possibilities 

In Yang Eric Li’s newly published paper in Science, A comparative atlas of single-cell chromatin accessibility in the human brain, he and his colleagues revealed the largest maps of the human brain, uncovering new information that was never available before.