Chen Liao

Chen Liao is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College. He holds a PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and completed postdoctoral training at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center under Dr. Joao Xavier and Dr. Tobias Hohl.

• Education: B.S. in Physics (University of Science and Technology of China, 2010), PhD in Bioengineering (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
• Research Affiliations: Microbiology and Molecular Pathogenesis Program, Dartmouth Cancer Center, DartCF Cystic Fibrosis Center

His research integrates computational modeling, experimental microbiology, and clinical data analysis to study microbial metabolism in the human gut microbiome, focusing on metabolite-mediated interactions between microbes and hosts. Key projects include developing metabolic flux analysis for community-scale microbiome modeling and creating a 3D virtual gut model incorporating fluid mechanics, immune responses, and drug resistance.

Recent scientific contributions include analyzing echinocandin heteroresistance in Candida parapsilosis infections (Nature Medicine, 2024), quantifying oral bacteria abundance in feces post-microbiota depletion (Nature Microbiology, 2024), and advancing hypergraph learning for metabolic network reconstruction (Nature Communications, 2023). He also maintains active development of computational tools for microbiome data analysis.

The Liao Lab collaborates with fungal research experts like Deborah Hogan, Robert Cramer, and Joshua Obar at Dartmouth, while recruiting postdoctoral researchers in fungal metabolomics. Lab activities include developing mass spectrometry technologies for untargeted metabolite profiling and stable isotope tracing experiments to study metabolic flux in fungal pathogens.