Ken Chen

Dr. Ken Chen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, with an adjunct role at Rice University. His research focuses on developing computational tools for cancer genomics, single-cell analysis, and AI-driven precision medicine. He holds leadership roles, including Director of Bioinformatics at the Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan Institute for Personalized Cancer Therapy.

Education: B.E. from Tsinghua University (1996), Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (2004), and postdoctoral training at UC San Diego. Prior experience includes roles at Washington University School of Medicine and Microsoft Research.

Research Interests: Cancer genomics, single-cell/spatial transcriptomics, tumor heterogeneity, AI applications in oncology, and bioinformatics tool development (e.g., BreakDancer, Monopogen, METAFlux). His lab collaborates widely, with grants from NIH, CPRIT, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

Notable Achievements: Developed widely used computational tools for structural variant detection and tumor phylogeny analysis. Awards include the Andrew Sabin Family Fellow (2016) and recognition in the ICGC-TCGA DREAM Challenge (2014).

Lab Activities: The Chen Lab trains postdocs, PhD students, and undergraduates in computational biology and translational research. Current projects include CAR-NK cell therapy optimization and spatial omics analysis.