Hao Chen

I am an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois Chicago, and a core member of the UIC Center for Bioinformatics and Quantitative Biology (CBQB).

Prior to that, I completed my postdoctoral research in the Ray and Stephanie Lane Computational Biology Department of School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, working with Professors Ziv Bar-Joseph and Jose Lugo-Martinez. I obtained my PhD in Computer Science at the University of California, Riverside, where I was supervised by Professor Tao Jiang.

My research interests lie broadly in computational biology and bioinformatics. Currently, my research focuses on the development of machine learning methods using large-scale single-cell and spatial omics data to study the programs of cellular organization, communication, and differentiation, and their impact on tissue development, health, and disease. I also worked on drug discovery and biological sequence modeling for learning isoform functions and alternative splicing.

During my PhD, I was a research intern with Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, where I worked on gene signature representation for drug discovery. I also interned at Google, working on deep learning topics.

New! I am looking for motivated PhD students starting from Spring/Fall 2025. If you’re interested in joining my lab, please reach out! Current UIC undergraduate and master’s students with an interest in research are also encouraged to contact me.