Zhiping Weng

Zhiping Weng is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Genomics and Computational Biology at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School. She holds the Li Weibo Chair in Biomedical Research and is affiliated with the T.H. Chan School of Medicine and Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. Her research focuses on computational biology, genomics, and systems biology, with a particular emphasis on understanding gene regulation, epigenomics, and small RNA biology.

Dr. Weng earned her B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Science and Technology of China (1992) and her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Boston University (1997). She joined UMass Chan Medical School in 2008 to establish the Program in Bioinformatics and Integrative Biology.

Her research integrates computational methods with high-throughput genomics data to study transcriptional regulation, protein interactions, and small RNA mechanisms. Key projects include developing tools for predicting transcription factor binding sites, analyzing nucleosome positioning, and modeling protein complexes. Her lab also explores the role of piRNAs and miRNAs in transposon silencing and developmental processes.

Recent work includes studies on tRNA sequencing, koala retrovirus evolution, and the functional annotation of regulatory elements across species. Her contributions span bioinformatics tool development (e.g., ZDOCK for protein docking) and collaborative efforts in genome-wide studies like ENCODE.

Dr. Weng advises students and postdocs in computational biology and collaborates extensively on epigenetic and systems biology projects. Her lab is part of the broader genomic research community at UMass Chan, contributing to advancements in personalized medicine and functional genomics.