Research
Resources
Joining the Li Group
The Li Group is actively recruiting well-qualified postdoctoral fellows, graduate students and rotation students.
Qualifications
- Applicants should have strong quantitative background with strong statistical and computational skills. Knowledge in biology or genetics is desired but not required. Postdoctoral fellows should know at least one programming language (e.g., C/C++, Java, Perl, Python) and at least one statistical package (e.g., SAS, R, MatLab).
Salary and Benefits for Postdoctoral Fellows
- Salary is commensurate with qualifications and will be equal to or exceed NIH postdoctoral stipends. Benefits will be in accordance with UNC standard postdoctoral benefits, including medical insurance, continuing education, and retirement plan.
Application Procedure for Postdoctoral Fellows
- Please email the following materials to yunli@med.unc.edu:
- A Cover Letter;
- Curriculum Vitae;
- Sample Codes from Recent Programming;
- Publication Reprints;
- Contact Information of 3 References.
- A Cover Letter;
Potential Projects
Potential projects include but are not limited to:- Analysis of spatial transcriptomics data.
- Joint analysis of Hi-C and high-resolution imaging data.
- Analysis of single cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) data. Selected publications from the Li lab include: Yang et al 2018, Fang et al 2019, Li et al 2019, Huh et al 2020, Dong et al 2020, Yang et al 2020, Van Buren et al 2020+.
- Genetic association studies of blood cell traits in multi-ethnic cohorts. Blood cell traits, including hemoglobin level, red blood cell (RBC), white blood cell (WBC), and platelet counts (PLT), are important intermediate clinical phenotypes for a variety of cardiovascular, hematologic, oncologic, immunologic and infectious diseases. We will use a combination of GWAS,WGS (whole genome sequencing) from 10,000-100,000s individuals together with other omics data to improve gene mapping for blood cell traits. Selected publications from the Li lab include: Auer et al 2012, Raffield et al 2019, Kowalski et al 2020, Vuckovic et al 2020+, Chen et al 2020+.
- DNA 3D structure. Chromosomes are heavily packed; but they are not packed in a random way. The structure they take, which is dynamic and stochastic, is heavily associated with their function. My group is developing methods and software for data from 3C (Chromosome Conformation Capture) derived technologies. Selected publications from the Li lab include: Xu et al 2015, Xu et al 2016a, Xu et al 2016b, Schmitt et al 2016, Martin et al 2017, Li Y et al 2018, Li M et al 2018, Juric et al 2019, Song et al 2019, Gorkin et al 2019, Crowley et al 2020+, Giusti-RodrÃguez et al 2020+, Song et al 2020+.
- Genotype imputation and analysis of imputed data for association studies. Selected publications from the Li lab include: Li et al 2009, Huang et al 2009, Li et al 2010, Zheng et al 2011, Li et al 2011, Liu et al 2012a, Liu et al 2012b, Auer et al 2012, Duan et al 2013a, Duan et al 2013b, ..., Kowalski et al 2020.
- Brain imaging genetics Selected publications from the Li lab include: Zhao et al 2018, Zhao et al 2019a, Zhao et al 2019b, Zhao et al 2020+a, Zhao et al 2020+b.
- Design and analysis of sequencing-based association studies. Selected publications from the Li lab include: The 1000 Genomes Project Consortium 2010, Li et al 2010, Zawistowski et al 2010, Li et al 2011a, Li et al 2011b, Wu et al 2011, Li et al 2012, Chen et al 2012, Auer et al 2012, The 1000 Genomes Project Consortium 2012, Kang et al 2013, Byrnes et al 2013, Yan et al 2014, Bizon et al 2014, Lange et al 2014, ..., Zhou et al 2019, Kowalski et al 2020, Raffield et al 2020, Halvorsen et al 2020.
- Genetic studies of Admixed Populations. African Americans and Hispanics are admixed, i.e., have their chromosomes from more than one ancestral populations. They provide excellent opportunities to boost both power and resolution for gene mapping, i.e., finding genes or genetic variants associated with phenotypic traits like blood lipid levels, height, risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases etc. Selected publications from the Li lab include: Liu et al 2012, Auer et al 2012, Duan et al 2013, Raffield et al 2017, Duan et al 2018, Raffield et al 2018a, Raffield et al 2018b, Raffield et al 2020, Kowalski et al 2020.
- Analysis of transcriptomic and multi-omics data. Selected publications from the Li lab include: Ding et al 2010, Li et al 2011, Ramasamy et al 2013, ..., Zhong et al 2019, Zhong et al 2020, Yang et al 2020, Zhao et al 2020+, Zhong et al 2020+.
- Analysis of DNA methylation data. Selected publications from the Li lab include: Zhang et al 2016, ..., Lu et al 2019, Gondalia et al 2019, Kim et al 2019, Agha et al 2019, Johnson et al 2019, Li et al 2020+.
People
Collaborations
Research Environment
- World-Class University;
- Great Neighborhood (Research Triangle);
- Great Location (Chapel Hill);
- Great Graduate Programs;
- World-Renowned Geneticists and Statisticians;
- Great Computing Facilities.