Yang Li

Prof. Yang Li serves as Director of the Centre for Individualised Infection Medicine (CiiM) and heads the Department of Computational Biology for Individualised Medicine at CiiM and the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI), affiliated with Hannover Medical School in Germany.

Education:

• PhD in Bioinformatics, University of Groningen, 2010

Research Focus: Her work centers on deciphering molecular mechanisms of immune-related/infectious diseases through multi-omics integration, leveraging single-cell genomics, spatial transcriptomics, and machine learning to advance individualized infection medicine. Key methodologies include computational analysis of epigenetic regulation, immune cell phenotyping, and genetic epidemiology in disease contexts.

Publication Trends: Recent 2025 work demonstrates strong emphasis on trained immunity (BCG vaccination studies), immune aging clocks, and spatial mapping of inflammatory niches in sarcoidosis/gout, with consistent multi-omics approaches across HIV comorbidities, transplant rejection, and metabolic surgery outcomes.

Scientific Recognition:

• National Bioinformatics Young Investigator Award (2011)
• NWO-VENI grant (2013)
• ZonMW-Offroad grant
• Hypatia grant

She has co-authored ~70 publications in journals including Cell, Nature Medicine, and Nature Immunology, and serves as reviewer for Nature Ecology & Evolution and Genetics.

Laboratory Leadership: Directs the Computational Biology for Individualised Medicine group developing AI-driven tools for multi-omics data analysis, with recent focus on gene regulatory network benchmarks (geneRNIB) and spatial immune profiling.