Rui Chen

Rui Chen is a Professor of Ophthalmology at University of California Irvine and a Visiting Professor in Molecular and Human Genetics at Baylor College of Medicine. His research bridges Human Cell Atlas methodologies with clinical genetics to decode the functional consequences of genomic variants in neural degenerative diseases, particularly retinal disorders.

• Education: BS (Tsinghua University, 1994), PhD (Baylor College of Medicine, 1999), Post-Doctoral Fellowship (BCM, 2002)

Rui Chen's research interests span:

• Genetic variant discovery in Mendelian and complex visual diseases
• Single-cell omics for retinal development and disease modeling
• Therapeutic innovation via CRISPR, gene therapy, and neural regeneration

His publications highlight interdisciplinary approaches combining next-generation sequencing, retinal organoids, and machine learning to address inherited and age-related retinal degenerations. The Chen Lab at Baylor College of Medicine leads efforts in Human Cell Atlas construction for the visual system, fostering collaborations with institutions globally.