Chunlei Wu

Chunlei Wu is a Professor at The Scripps Research Institute in the Department of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology. He leads a team developing large-scale biomedical data integration systems and tools, focusing on applying data science and cloud computing to advance biomedical discovery. His work emphasizes semantic knowledge representation, API-driven resource discovery, and open science infrastructure.

• Affiliations: Scripps Research Institute (2021–Present: Tenured Professor; 2017–2021: Associate Professor)
• Education: PhD in Biomathematics/Biostatistics (2006, UT Health Science Center Houston), B.S./M.S. in Biochemistry (1997/2000, Nanjing University)

Research Interests: Wu’s lab creates foundational tools like MyGene.info, MyVariant.info, and BioThings SDK, which serve as scalable APIs for querying gene, variant, and chemical data. These platforms support drug discovery, genomic analysis, and pandemic response (e.g., Outbreak.info for SARS-CoV-2 surveillance). His work bridges data interoperability challenges through semantic integration and FAIR principles.

Awards: Recognized for contributions to biomedical informatics, including the 2017 ESWC Best In-Use Paper Award and hackathon victories for API development. His tools are widely adopted, with MyGene.info processing ~30M monthly API requests.

• Labs/Teams: A multidisciplinary team includes senior scientists (e.g., Ginger Tsueng), programmers, and developers focused on API engineering, bioinformatics pipelines, and community engagement.