Li Ding is the David English Smith Distinguished Professor of Medicine at

Washington University School of Medicine Washington University School of Medicine (WashU Medicine) is the medical school of Washington University in St. Louis, located in the Central West End neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 1891, the School of Medicine shares a ca ...

. She is known for the development of multiple computational tools now commonly used in cancer biology research, including VarScan, HotSpot3D, and BreakDancer.

Education

Ding obtained her Bachelor of Science degree in biology from

Fudan University Fudan University (FDU) is a public university, national public university in Yangpu, Shanghai, Yangpu, Shanghai, China. It is affiliated with the Ministry of Education (China), Ministry of Education and is co-funded with the Shanghai Municipal ...

in 1991. She moved to the United States and completed her Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1998 at

University of Utah The University of Utah (the U, U of U, or simply Utah) is a public university, public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. It was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret (Book of Mormon), Deseret by the General A ...

. She did her post-doctoral research in

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

from 1998 until 2000. She worked at Incyte Genomics for two years before joining the Genome Institute at

Washington University in St. Louis Washington University in St. Louis (WashU) is a private research university in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. Founded in 1853 by a group of civic leaders and named for George Washington, the university spans 355 acres across its Danforth ...

in 2002. As of 2023, she is the David English Smith Distinguished Professor of Medicine at Washington University in St. Louis.

Research

Ding is known for her work in using computational tools in cancer research and has collaborated frequently with

David Fenyő David Fenyö is a Hungarian-Swedish-American computational biologist, physicist and businessman. He is currently professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at NYU Langone Medical Center. Fenyö's research focuses on th ...

, Timothy J. Ley,

Matthew Meyerson Matthew Langer Meyerson (born June 4, 1963) is an American pathologist and the Charles A. Dana Chair in Human Cancer Genetics at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He is also director of the Center for Cancer Genomics at the Dana-Farber Cancer Inst ...

, and

Michael Christopher Wendl Michael Christopher Wendl is a mathematician and biomedical engineer who has worked on DNA sequencing theory, covering and matching problems in probability, theoretical fluid mechanics, and co-wrote Phred. He was a scientist on the Human Genome P ...

. Her research has identified genes and gene mutations that play a role in cancer.

References

Living people Washington University School of Medicine faculty Fudan University alumni University of Utah alumni Computational biologists Cancer researchers Medical researchers Year of birth missing (living people) {{Academic-bio-stub