Lab Members

Principal Investigator

Dr. Xinshu (Grace) Xiao

Professor, Integrative Biology and Physiology
Maria R. Ross Chair
Director, Bioinformatics Interdepartmental Program

More about the PI

Dr. Xinshu (Grace) Xiao received her B.S. degree at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. She then went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for graduate studies, earning the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in 2000 and 2004, respectively. During this period, she worked on mathematical modeling and systems identification with Dr. Roger D. Kamm and Dr. Richard J. Cohen, respectively, at MIT. After receiving her Ph.D degree in the Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST), a joint program by MIT and Harvard Medical School, Dr. Xiao joined the laboratory of Dr. Chris B. Burge in the Department of Biology at MIT for postdoctoral training, where she carried out bioinformatic,genomic and experimental studies of alternative splicing.

In 2008, Dr. Xiao joined the faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is now the Maria R. Ross Endowed Professor of the Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology. She also serves as the Director of the Bioinformatics Interdepartmental Program. In addition to her primary appointment in the Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology, Dr. Xiao is affiliated with the Institute for Quantitative and Computational Biology, the Molecular Biology Institute, and the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. She is a training faculty with several Ph.D. programs, including the Bioinformatics IDP, Molecular Biology IDP, Molecular, Cellular and Integrative Physiology IDP, and the Bioengineering Ph.D. program. She is also a participating faculty in the Computational and Systems Biology undergraduate program.

Scientists and Postdoctoral Scholars

Dr. Jae Hoon Bahn

Associate Project Scientist

Jae is an Associate Project Scientist in the Xiao lab. He received his Ph.D. in comparative experimental medicine from the University of Tennessee and joined the Xiao lab in 2011. Jae is working on diverse molecular and biochemical experiments for RNA biology in the lab. He likes cooking, watching Netflix, swimming, and playing piano.

Dr. Ting Fu

Postdoc

Ting is a postdoctoral fellow in the Xiao lab. She earned her PhD in MCIP at UCLA in 2022. She developed a new MPRA system, namely MapUTR, to uncover functional variants in the 3′ UTR. Ting also studies the functions of RNA editing in basic biological systems and disease models.

Dr. Cong Liu

Postdoc

Cong is a postdoctoral fellow in the Xiao lab. She earned her PhD in Computational Biology at Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2020. During her PhD and postdoctoral work, Cong studied RNA modifications, multi-omic data mining and big data analytics. She is generally interested in Bioinformatics and genomics applied to RNA biology.

Dr. Thuy Linh Nguyen

Postdoc

Linh is a postdoctoral fellow in the Xiao lab. She earned her PhD from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2020. She studied microRNA processing and discovered non-canonical mechanisms of the microprocessor. Linh is generally interested in RNA biology and genomics.

Dr. Giovanni Quinones-Valdez

Postdoc

Giovanni is a postdoctoral fellow in the Xiao lab. He earned his PhD in Bioengineering at UCLA in 2022. His research mainly focuses on the study of RNA variants, including RNA editing and genetic variants. He studies the function and regulation of such variants by developing novel bioinformatics methods and algorithms and apply them to large-scale data analysis.

Rajagopal Varada

SRA

Raj completed training in RNA biology. His research mainly focuses on the study of RNA editing and innate immunity. He studies the function and regulation of RNA editing and double-stranded RNAs using both experimental and bioinformatics approaches.

Siqi Wang

Postdoc

Siqi is a postdoctoral fellow in the Xiao lab. She earned her PhD in Computational Biology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2025. She studied RNA splicing and translation using computational approaches. Siqi is generally interested in computational and genomic approaches to RNA biology and disease.

Dr. Laixing Zhang

Postdoc

Laixing is a postdoctoral fellow in the Xiao lab. He earned his PhD in Tsinghua University in 2020. His research mainly focuses on the study of RNA editing and its regulatory mechanisms. He is generally interested in RNA binding proteins and their function in RNA regulation.

Dr. Yuyun Zhang

Postdoc

Yuyun is a postdoctoral fellow in the Xiao lab. She earned her PhD in Bioinformatics and Functional Epigenomics at CEMPS, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2023. She studied gene regulatory mechanisms of transposable elements (TEs), evolutionary patterns of TEs and their epigenetic regulation. Yuyun is generally interested in computational approaches to RNA biology and disease.