About Zhong Chen, PhD

I first joined Center for Genomics as Research Associate in January 2017, and was re-appointed at Research Assistant Professor level in February 20224. This promotion was the recognition of my years of self-motivated learning on next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies and bioinformatics. After concerted learning, I gained remarkable knowledge and experience in genomics, epigenetics, and spatial omics, beside my training in biochemistry and molecular genetics. My NGS expertise includes single cell isolation and capture, single cell library (gene expression, Multiome, and spatial Visium) preparation, RNA-seq, ATAC-seq, WGS, WGBS, and WG-ox-BS library preparation, as well as library sequencing and data quality control. I am the main personnel at LLU Center for Genomics for the raw data generation and quality control. This aspect of my expertise has been fully demonstrated in the benchmark studies from the FDA Sequencing Quality Control Consortium II project. High quality NGS data was generated from LLU site and several high-profile benchmarking papers were published from this project. In addition, in the last several years, I have extended my NGS expertise into data analysis and visualization using Python and R coding. In sum, my skills and expertise ensure high quality operation of the Center for Genomics.