Yao Li

About

Yao Li is an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, specializing in statistics and operations research. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of California, Davis, working with Prof. Cho-Jui Hsieh and Prof. Thomas C.M. Lee. His academic background also includes a bachelor's degree in Statistics from Fudan University, China. Dr. Li's research focuses on developing innovative algorithms to address real-world challenges within the machine learning pipeline. He investigates both the statistical and computational aspects of machine learning models, with particular emphasis on the security of these models and computational pathology.

Research topics

• Genetics
• Biology
• Medicine
• Computational biology
• Evolutionary biology
• Demography
• Endocrinology
• Bioinformatics
• Internal medicine
• Neuroscience

Selected publications

• Sequencing of 53,831 diverse genomes from the NHLBI TOPMed Program

  Nature · 2021 · 2261 citations

  . In the first 53,831 TOPMed samples, we detected more than 400 million single-nucleotide and insertion or deletion variants after alignment with the reference genome. Additional previously undescribed variants were detected through assembly of unmapped reads and customized analysis in highly variable loci. Among the more than 400 million detected variants, 97% have frequencies of less than 1% and 46% are singletons that are present in only one individual (53% among unrelated individuals). These…

  DOI

• The Polygenic and Monogenic Basis of Blood Traits and Diseases

  Cell · 2020 · 731 citations

  Blood cells play essential roles in human health, underpinning physiological processes such as immunity, oxygen transport, and clotting, which when perturbed cause a significant global health burden. Here we integrate data from UK Biobank and a large-scale international collaborative effort, including data for 563,085 European ancestry participants, and discover 5,106 new genetic variants independently associated with 29 blood cell phenotypes covering a range of variation impacting hematopoiesis…

  DOI

• Inherited causes of clonal haematopoiesis in 97,691 whole genomes

  Nature · 2020 · 726 citations

  DOI

• Multi-ancestry genetic study of type 2 diabetes highlights the power of diverse populations for discovery and translation

  Nature Genetics · 2022 · 724 citations

  DOI

• Trans-ethnic and Ancestry-Specific Blood-Cell Genetics in 746,667 Individuals from 5 Global Populations

  Cell · 2020 · 723 citations

  DOI

Recent grants

• Clinical Translational Research Center for Neurodevelopmental Disorders

  NIH · $13.6M · 2025–2027

• NIH Grant R01HL129132

  NIH · $2.7M · 2022

• Comprehensive characterization of HNF1A-driven beta-cell heterogeneity

  NIH · $3.4M · 2018–2028

Frequent coauthors

• Xin Wang

  West China Hospital of Sichuan University

  1403 shared

• Fan Yang

  Peking University

  1344 shared

• Jun Wang

  Chinese Academy of Sciences

  1307 shared

• Kai Zhang

  Second Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University

  805 shared

• Myriam Fornage

  The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston

  175 shared

• Ramachandran S. Vasan

  National Heart Lung and Blood Institute

  150 shared

• Joshua C. Bis

  University of Washington

  136 shared

• Jerome I. Rotter

  UCLA Medical Center

  131 shared

Similar researchers at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Richard Smithh-105
• Andrew Nobelh-52
• Yufeng Liuh-47