Dr. Jie Liang is a Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Engineering. He received his PhD training in experimental biophysics and continued his research training in computational geometry, computational topology, and computational biology during his postdoc years. Research in his lab is focused on constructing quantitative models and developing computational tools to study biological systems for gaining understanding of how living systems work.
Dr. Liang’s lab has developed state-of-the-art tools for computing protein binding pockets and voids, as well as general metric measurements based on the alpha shape theory and dual complexes. The CastP server developed in his lab is widely used by structural biologists. In the past ten years, Dr, Liang’s lab gained significant experience in developing models and algorithms for sampling chain polymers, with studies on methodology development of constrained sampling by sequential Monte Carlo, including sampling transition state ensemble of protein folding based on contact maps, chain growth, as well as algorithm for pseudoknotted RNA secondary and tertiary structure. Recent work on the development of the Constrained Self-Avoiding Chromosome (C-SAC) model and the geometric sequential importance sampling technique enabled the elucidation of the physical basis of the scaling properties of chromosomes observed in FISH and Hi-C studies.
His laboratory had also developed algorithms for reconstruction of ensemble 3D structures of chromosomes. Dr. Liang’s other expertise is in molecular phylogeny, where his lab developed a Bayesian Monte Carlo method for estimating substitution rates of molecular evolution based on phylogenetic analysis. As of May 2018, he has served as dissertation advisor for 16 students who obtained PhD degrees. Dr. Liang had also authored more than 130 publications, which attracted more than 8,435 citations.
His research is focused on database/tools for inference and cancer mutations.