陈力 Li Chen Li Chen

Li Chen is a Research Assistant Professor at the School of Engineering, Westlake University. A computational biologist with more than ten years of experience, he specializes in statistical genetics and AI methods. Starting from human genetic data, he seeks genetically supported drug targets for complex diseases to advance early-stage drug discovery.

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified thousands of disease-associated variants, most of which lie outside protein-coding regions. It often remains unclear which genes these variants act through, in which cells, and by what mechanisms. His work addresses this question by linking variants to gene expression and mapping their effects to specific cell types and to spatial locations within tissue. He uses this evidence to prioritize candidate disease genes and potential targets such as long non-coding RNAs.

He received his PhD from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and was a postdoctoral researcher in Prof. Jian Yang’s group at Westlake University. He has authored 14 papers, including one preprint, seven of them as first or co-first author. His representative work appears in Nature Communications and The American Journal of Human Genetics.

Next, he plans to combine single-cell foundation models and other AI methods with multi-omic genetic evidence. By closing the loop between computation and experiment, he aims to carry target discovery forward into the design and optimization of nucleic acid drugs. He welcomes exchanges and collaboration with academia and industry.