Xianjun Dong, PhD

Xianjun Dong’s research integrates computational biology, genomics, and neuroscience to uncover the molecular foundations of human cognition and its vulnerabilities. His work focuses on decoding the non-coding genome in the human brain, leveraging comparative genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, and single-cell multi-omics to reveal how regulatory elements and RNA dynamics shape neural function. Through initiatives such as the BRAINcode project, his team has identified tens of thousands of enhancer RNAs and circular RNAs in dopamine neurons, linking them to genetic variation, cognitive function, and risk for neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases. His laboratory is also building a large-scale cellular and spatial atlas of 200 human Parkinson’s disease brains, developing new models to understand how genomic architecture—such as the evolution of extraordinarily long neuronal introns—relates to synaptic complexity and cognition. Complementing these computational advances, Dr. Dong’s group pioneers experimental platforms, including next-generation extracellular vesicle isolation technologies and human midbrain organoids, to model disease mechanisms and test RNA therapies. Together, these efforts advance the Wu Tsai Institute’s mission by deepening mechanistic insight into cognition, enabling the discovery of brain health innovations, and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration across computation, molecular biology, and neuroscience.

biomarkers ;  epidemiology ;  epigenetics ;  genomics ;  sequencing ;  statistical methods ;  stem cell biology ;  transcriptomics  

algorithms ;  cellular neuroscience ;  computational biology ;  evolution ;  genetics ;  machine learning ;  predictive modeling ;  synapses  

Dong received his PhD in Genomics and Bioinformatics from the University of Bergen and completed postdoctoral training with the ENCODE Project. Before joining Yale in 2024, he directed the Genomics and Bioinformatics Hub at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and served as an Assistant Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. His lab at Yale focuses on decoding the brain’s regulatory genome and building AI+multi-omics resources to advance discovery in neurodegenerative diseases. Outside the lab, he is a father of three who enjoys fostering his children’s curiosity in science and cooking big family meals.