Wanding Zhou, PhD

Wanding Zhou, PhD, uses data science to better patient outcomes and quality of life. He is a computational scientist in the Center for Computational and Genomic Medicine at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and an assistant professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Zhou’s lab develops novel algorithms and big data analytics to understand epigenetic cell identity and its dynamics in cell fate transition, organismal development, and human disease.

His team aims to disentangle the cellular and the physiological processes that impact DNA methylation and chromatin states. For example, highly proliferative tissue such as cancer is known for having undergone DNA methylation loss in adult humans. Through analyzing hundreds of human and mice methylomes, Dr. Zhou and his colleagues determined mitotic division to be the primary driving force of this DNA methylation attrition (Nature Genetics, 2018).

Before setting up a lab at CHOP, Dr. Zhou received his PhD in Bioengineering from Rice University in 2013 and postdoctoral training at UT MD Anderson Cancer Center and Van Andel Research Institute.