Xia Yang

Xia Yang is a Professor at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), with dual appointments in the Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology and the Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology under the College of Letters and Science. Her research focuses on integrative multiomics and systems biology approaches to dissect complex diseases, particularly cardiometabolic disorders (coronary artery disease, diabetes, obesity, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease) and brain disorders (traumatic brain injury, Alzheimer’s disease), investigating how genetic and environmental factors interact through perturbed gene networks to influence disease susceptibility and therapeutic responses.

• Developed tools: Mergeomics (multi-omics data integration), Pharmomics (drug repurposing), SCING (single-cell network modeling), JSTA (spatial transcriptomics analysis).
• Active grants include NIH R01NS117148 (TBI molecular substrates), NIH R01DK117850 (NASH systems genetics), and BreakthroughT1D funding.
• Recent publications highlight single-cell studies of diet-induced metabolic syndrome, neurodevelopmental gene networks, and immune-modulating therapies for diabetes.

Her work bridges bioinformatics, toxicogenomics, and translational research, with a strong emphasis on sex-specific and tissue-specific pathways in diseases like NAFLD and pulmonary hypertension. She collaborates extensively with institutions such as City of Hope and UCLA’s Yang Lab.

Scientific awards include the Suzanne Eaton Memorial Prize and Taylor M. Brown Memorial Award. Her lab’s tools and multi-tissue analyses have been widely disseminated, including presentations at the UCLA QCBio webinar.