Bio

B.S., Physics, Peking University, 2005Ph.D., Physics, The George Washington University, 2010Postdoc, Computational Biology, Harvard University, 2016

"We use computational approaches to study how genes work in the chromatin and how they dysfunction in cancer."

Chongzhi Zang

Dr. Chongzhi Zang is an assistant professor and resident faculty member in the Center for Public Health Genomics, University of Virginia. He holds faculty appointments in the Departments of Public Health Sciences, Biomedical Engineering, and Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics. He is also a faculty member in the UVA Cancer Center and the Data Science Institute.

Chongzhi did his undergraduate research in high-field laser physics with Jie Zhang at the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his PhD research in computational epigenomics with Weiqun Peng at the George Washington University and Keji Zhao at the National Institutes of Health. Prior to joining UVA in 2016, he completed his postdoctoral training with Xiaole Shirley Liu at Harvard University's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Chongzhi is a computational biologist with expertise in cancer epigenomics. His research focuses on algorithm development for high-throughput genomic data analytics and integrative modeling of gene regulatory networks in mammalian cell systems.

Awards

  • NCI Career Transition Award 2017-2020
  • Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Fellow Award 2012-2015
  • Dimitris N. Chorafas Foundation Prize 2010

Research Interests

  • Biomedical Data Sciences
  • Bioinformatics Methodology Development
  • Epigenetics and Chromatin Biology
  • Transcriptional Regulation
  • Cancer Genomics and Epigenomics
  • Theoretical and Computational Biophysics

Selected Publications

  • BART: a transcription factor prediction tool with query gene sets or epigenomic profiles. Bioinformatics, bty194 (2018) ABS Zhenjia Wang, Mete Civelek, Clint L. Miller, Nathan C. Sheffield, Michael J. Guertin, Chongzhi Zang
  • High-dimensional genomic data bias correction and data integration using MANCIE. Nature Communications 7, 11305 (2016) ABS Chongzhi Zang*, Tao Wang*, Ke Deng, Bo Li, Sheng’en Hu, Qian Qin, Tengfei Xiao, Shihua Zhang, Clifford A. Meyer, Housheng Hansen He, Myles Brown, Jun S. Liu, Yang Xie, X. Shirley Liu
  • Modeling cis-regulation with a compendium of genome-wide histone H3K27ac profiles. Genome Research 26, 1417–1429 (2016) ABS Su Wang*, Chongzhi Zang*, Tengfei Xiao, Jingyu Fan, Shenglin Mei, Qian Qin, Qiu Wu, Xujuan Li, Kexin Xu, Housheng Hansen He, Myles Brown, Clifford A. Meyer, X. Shirley Liu
  • NF-E2, FLI1 and RUNX1 collaborate at areas of dynamic chromatin to activate transcription in mature mouse megakaryocytes. Scientific Reports 6, 30255 (2016) ABS Chongzhi Zang*, Annouck Luyten*, Christina Chen, X. Shirley Liu, Ramesh A. Shivdasani
  • Active enhancers are delineated de novo during hematopoiesis with limited lineage fidelity among specified primary blood cells. Genes and Development 28, 1827–1839 (2014) ABS Annouck Luyten*, Chongzhi Zang*, X. Shirley Liu, Ramesh A. Shivdasani
  • NOTCH1-RBPJ complexes drive target gene expression through dynamic interactions with superenhancers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 111, 715–710 (2014) ABS Hongfang Wang*, Chongzhi Zang*, Len Taing, Kelly Arnett, Yinling Joey Wong, Warren S. Pear, Stephen C. Blacklow, X. Shirley Liu, Jon C. Aster
  • Genome-wide mapping of HATs and HDACs reveals distinct functions in active and inactive genes. Cell 138, 1019–1031 (2009) ABS Zhibin Wang*, Chongzhi Zang*, Kairong Cui*, Dustin E. Schones, Artem Barski, Weiqun Peng, Keji Zhao
  • A clustering approach for identification of enriched domains from histone modification ChIP-Seq data. Bioinformatics 25, 1952–1958 (2009) ABS Chongzhi Zang, Dustin E. Schones, Chen Zeng, Kairong Cui, Keji Zhao, Weiqun Peng
  • H3.3/H2A.Z double variant-containing nucleosomes mark ‘nucleosome-free regions’ of active promoters and other regulatory regions. Nature Genetics 41, 941–945 (2009) ABS Chunyuan Jin*, Chongzhi Zang*, Gang Wei, Kairong Cui, Weiqun Peng, Keji Zhao, Gary Felsenfeld
  • Chromatin signatures in multipotent hematopoietic stem cells indicate the fate of bivalent genes during differentiation. Cell Stem Cell 4, 80–93 (2009) ABS Kairong Cui*, Chongzhi Zang*, Tae-Young Roh, Dustin E. Schones, Richard W. Childs, Weiqun Peng, Keji Zhao
  • Combinatorial patterns of histone acetylations and methylations in the human genome. Nature Genetics 40, 897–903 (2008) ABS Zhibin Wang*, Chongzhi Zang*, Jeffrey A. Rosenfeld*, Dustin E. Schones, Artem Barski, Suresh Cuddapah, Kairong Cui, Tae-Young Roh, Weiqun Peng, Michael Q. Zhang, Keji Zhao
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