Ya-Chi Ho

Ya-Chi Ho is an Associate Professor in the Department of Microbial Pathogenesis at the Yale School of Medicine. She serves as Director of Graduate Studies for the Microbiology PhD Program within the Biological and Biomedical Sciences (BBS) program. Her research focuses on understanding HIV-1 persistence and immune dysfunction using cutting-edge single-cell genomic approaches. Dr. Ho holds secondary appointments in the Departments of Immunology, Infectious Diseases, and Virology Laboratories at Yale, and collaborates with initiatives like the NIH Structural Biology Center CHEETAH and the Martin Delaney Collaboratory.

Education: MD from National Cheng Kung University (2002), residency and fellowship in Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases at National Taiwan University Hospital (2005–2007), PhD in Cellular and Molecular Medicine from Johns Hopkins University (2013), and postdoctoral training at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (2014).

Research Interests: Dr. Ho’s lab investigates mechanisms of HIV persistence, particularly clonal expansion of latently infected cells and HIV-driven transcriptional dysregulation. Key projects include single-cell multi-omic profiling of HIV reservoirs, CRISPR-based screens for latency reversal, and translational drug discovery targeting aberrant gene expression. Recent findings highlight the role of cytotoxic CD4+ T cells and tissue resident memory programs in HIV persistence.

Awards: Notable honors include the Andy Kaplan Prize (2018), Gilead Sciences Research Scholar Award (2018), and NIH R01 grants. Her work has been published in Immunity, Science Translational Medicine, and Cell Host & Microbe.

Grants & Collaborations: NIH-funded projects (R01, UM1, P01) support her research. Current clinical trials investigate mechanisms of HIV latency and interventions targeting the latent reservoir.

Labs & Infrastructure: Director of the Ya-Chi Ho Lab at the Boyer Center for Molecular Medicine. Collaborates with the Yale Cancer Center and Center for RNA Science and Medicine.