People

Hongjie Li, PhD
Hongjie.li@bcm.edu

Principal Investigator

Hongjie got his bachelor’s degree from University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in 2010. He joined Dr. Henri Jasper’s lab as a PhD student at University of Rochester and moved with the Jasper lab to the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, California, where Hongjie completed his PhD work in 2016. Hongjie used Drosophila fruit fly as the model organism, and his PhD work involved a variety of topics, including gut stem cell function, gut microbiota, inflammation and aging. Hongjie got his postdoctoral training with Dr. Liqun Luo at Stanford University, where he combined single-cell RNAseq with genetic tools to study neural wiring during brain development.

Currently, Hongjie is an assistant professor and CPRIT Scholar at Huffington Center on Aging & Department of Molecular and Human Genetics at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM). His research focuses on applying single-cell sequencing technologies to understand aging, with the ultimate goal of improving human healthy lifespan. [Google Scholar][BCM profile]

Yanyan Qi
Yanyan.Qi@bcm.edu

Laboratory Director

Yanyan obtained her medical degree of Clinical Medicine from Xinxiang Medical University (equivalent to US MD degree, certified) in China in 2011 and did one-year residency in Hospital. From 2012 to 2016, she worked in Dr. Henri Jasper lab as a Research Assistant at the Buck Institute, Novato CA. Later, she worked as a Life science research professional in Dr. Howard Chang lab at Stanford University, and then as a Senior Research Associate at PACT Pharma in South San Francisco. Before coming to Baylor College of Medicine, she worked with Dr. Ansu Satpathy as LSRP3 at Stanford University. Currently in Li lab, Yanyan is the Laboratory Director. Outside the lab, Yanyan loves cooking, and has recorded every single meal in an Excel table for the last several years.

Yanyan has extensive experience on FACS, scRNAseq, scATACseq, TCR-seq, ChIRP-MS and proteomics. Her work has contributed to 36 papers, including Science (3x, 2016, 2020, 2021), Cell (4x, 2019, 2021, 2021, 2022), Nature Medicine (2x, 2018, 2019), Nature Methods, Nature Biotechnology, eLife, and PNAS with >3,600 citations. [Google Scholar]

Niccole Auld
Niccole.Auld@bcm.edu

Graduate Student

Niccole graduated from the University of West Florida with her bachelor’s degree in biomedical sciences in 2019. She then joined the cancer and cell biology program at BCM, where she now works in Dr. Li’s lab (from 2021 March). Her research focuses on identifying factors contributing to age-related intestinal tumors using Drosophila intestinal stem cell (ISC) as a model.

In her spare time, she enjoys painting, taking care of her ever-expanding houseplant collection, and playing with her two cats named Ellie and Salem.

Tzu-Chiao Lu
Tzu-Chiao.Lu@bcm.edu

Postdoctoral fellow

Tzu-Chiao is a molecular and computational biologist. He got his bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from National Chung Cheng University and his PhD in Biology in National Defense Medical Center at Taiwan. He did his postdoc research with Ao-Lin Allen Hsu at National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, where he investigated aging mechanisms and performed scRNAseq profiling in worms. He joined Hongjie’s lab in July 2021 and his research focuses on single cell multi-omics data analysis to understand aging mechanisms and to identify longevity genes in Drosophila.

Madeline Burns
Madeline.Burns@bcm.edu

Postdoctoral fellow

Alzheimer’s Association Research Fellowship (AARF).
Center for Alzheimer’s and Neurodegenerative Diseases (CAND) Scholar.

Madeline graduated from Texas A&M University with a bachelor’s degree in Biology and a minor in Journalism Studies in 2012. She worked in industry before joining Dr. Julia Saltz’s lab at Rice University, where she completed her PhD work in 2021. Madeline’s PhD work focused on the ecological and evolutionary factors contributing to variation in cognition, both within and between species, as well as the influence of cognitive bias in cognitive performance.

Madeline joined the Li Lab in August 2021 as a postdoctoral associate in the Huffington Center on Aging at Baylor College of Medicine. Her research focuses on investigating how the brain ages, using a combination of multi-omics and behavioral approaches in the Drosophila fruit fly model system. Outside the lab, Madeline enjoys biking and exercising, trying new recipes, and spending time with friends and family.

Tyler Jackson
Tyler.Jackson@bcm.edu

Graduate Student

Tyler received his bachelor’s in biology with an emphasis on genetics and biotechnology from the University of Iowa in 2019. He then participated in a 1 year postbaccalaureate program elucidating mechanisms of DNA repair and recombination in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Tyler joined the Li lab at Baylor College of Medicine in February 2022. His primary interest in the Li lab is understanding the heterogeneity of intestinal stem cells in response to tumor initiating factors and how this heterogeneity varies with age.

Weightlifting is an integral hobby of his, with the occasional run here and there. Tyler also likes to spend time with friends outside of lab.

Ye-Jin Park
Yejin.park@bcm.edu

Graduate Student

Ye-Jin got her bachelor’s and master’s degree from Seoul National University, Korea.
She is from the DDMT program at BCM.
She is co-mentored with Drs. Hongjie Li and Hugo Bellen.
She has a cat.
She has a dog.
She loves Jeep.
She wants to cure all the rare diseases.

Chuangye Qi
chuangye.qi@bcm.edu

Postdoctoral fellow

Chuangye got his PhD degree on Bioinformatics from China Agricultural University in 2019, and did a postdoctoral training at UTHealth focusing on how 3D genome organization and Cis-regulatory elements regulate disease-related genes. He joined the Li lab in 2022 October. He is interested in discovering molecular mechanisms of human aging by using single-cell sequencing, spatial multi-omics, and bioinformatic approaches.

Chung-Yi Liang
Chung-I.Liang@bcm.edu

Research scholar

Chung-Yi is a visiting scholar in Hongjie’s lab. She got her PhD degree in National Taiwan University and her PhD works is focused on transcriptional regulation in yeast. Then she joined Allen Ao-Lin Hsu’s lab to study aging using C. elegans. In 2022, she started to have the collaboration between Hongjie and Allen labs. She is lucky and happy to explore more about a fantastic animal model—fruit fly in aging field with the powerful snRNA-seq tools! In her free time, she enjoys cooking and foods!

Erin Harrison