Rate My Professor Yang Dai

Professor Yang Dai is a distinguished faculty member in the Richard and Loan Hill Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), where she has served since 2001. She earned her Ph.D. in Management Science and Engineering from the University of Tsukuba, Japan, in 1991. Prior to her appointment at UIC, Dai held positions as a research associate and assistant professor in the Department of Management Science at Kobe University of Commerce from 1991 to 1997, followed by a role as assistant professor in the Department of Mathematical and Computing Sciences at Tokyo Institute of Technology from 1997 to 2001. Her academic journey reflects a strong foundation in computational methods applied to complex systems, transitioning into biomedical applications.

As Principal Investigator of the Laboratory of Computational Omics (CompOmics-Lab), Professor Dai's research centers on machine learning, data mining, and optimization for integrating multi-omics data—encompassing genetic, genomic, epigenetic, microbiome, and clinical datasets—to elucidate biological mechanisms, predict diseases, and discover biomarkers. Key contributions include tools such as scRegulate and BITFAM for inferring transcription factor activities from single-cell RNA-seq data, MiMeNet for modeling microbiome-metabolome interactions, MetaLonDA for identifying differentially abundant features in longitudinal metagenomic data, ISEGnet for assessing impacts of epigenetic modifications and DNA sequences on gene expression, and databases like MOMMI-MP for time-course metabolic and microbiome profiles during mouse pregnancy. Funded by NIH and NSF grants, her collaborative efforts with biomedical researchers advance hypothesis generation and therapeutic identification. Dai has authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications in journals and conferences. She holds leadership positions as Associate Director of Graduate Studies for Bioinformatics Programs, Interim Director of the Center for Bioinformatics and Quantitative Biology (CBQB)—appointed in late 2024 following the passing of founding director Jie Liang—and is affiliated with the University of Illinois Cancer Center, enhancing UIC's prominence in computational biology and biomedicine.