RONNIE LI'S PORTFOLIO
  • Home
  • Art
  • Poetry
    • Grade 11
    • Grade 12
    • College
    • The Rest
  • Prose
  • Research
  • Songs
  • Tourette
  • Teaching
    • NEUR0010
    • Testimonials
  • Contact

Curiosity cured the cat.

Current research.

I am a Ph.D. Candidate at Emory University in the lab of Dr. Zhaohui "Steve" Qin in the Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics. Although I am technically part of the Neuroscience Graduate Program, my research revolves around genomic data science, in particular, the following projects:
  • Using machine learning (ML) to identify pleiotropic expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) in multiple tissues and exons (multi-phenotype association tests).
 
  • Leveraging tissue-specific CpG sites to determine tissue-specific drivers in case-control studies.
 
  • Identifying risk variants and genetic drivers of cystic fibrosis with liver disease (side project).
 
  • Determining genetic drivers of motor neuron susceptibility in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
​
  • Analyzing various methods used to characterize marker genes in single-cell RNA-sequencing data

You can feel free to browse some of my research works on the right. If you don't have access and would like to read the full text of a manuscript, please reach out to me personally!
​
Picture
Dr. Qin's laboratory
Picture
Emory Neuroscience Graduate Program
Picture
My ORCID page
Picture
My Google Scholar page
Picture
My GitHub page

Yale University

In the summer of 2010, I worked at Yale University's Child Study Center under the supervision of Dr. Yuko Kataoka and Dr. Flora Vaccarino, the Principal Investigator, on a project on my own condition, Tourette Syndrome. I learned immunohistochemistry as well as a bit of stereology. My findings became incorporated into a larger study (a transcriptome analysis) that was published in 2016, and I was a co-author on the paper. You can check it out here.
Picture
Dr. Vaccarino's laboratory

UC Davis Medical Center

In the summer of 2012, I was an Edmondson Research Fellow at the UC Davis Medical Center working under Dr. Josh Miller and Dr. Ralph Green, the Principal Investigator, on a project on homocysteine in Alzheimer's disease. I learned about one-carbon metabolism and how to use high pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC). I attempted to correlate homocysteine measurements to Alzheimer's disease and dementia progression in my project.
Picture
The Hugh Edmondson internship program

The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research

In the summer of 2015, I worked at The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research under the supervision of Dr. Eric Chang. I used image analysis software to compare DTI (diffusion tensor imaging) white matter integrity to labeled fiber tracts in CLARITY whole brains. CLARITY is a relatively new technique that allows the investigator to make the mouse brain transparent, and it allows for greater resolution imaging and for molecular phenotyping of neuronal circuits. I was a co-author on the conference abstract.
Picture
The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research homepage

Emory University

I enrolled in Emory University's Neuroscience Graduate Program in Summer 2017. All students are required to complete at least three "rotation" projects in different labs.

For my first rotation project, I worked under Dr. Chad Hales in the Center for Neurodegenerative Disease investigating the aggregation properties of certain candidate proteins in post-mortem cases of frontotemporal dementia (FTD). The prevalence of FTD is about 10-15 cases per 100,000 people, and it is a neurodegenerative disorder, meaning that neurons in the brain progressively die until the person can no longer function on their own. We took a proteomic data set of enriched insoluble proteins and conducted an extensive literature review to determine which proteins warranted further investigation.

For my second rotation project, I worked under Dr. Brad Pearce in the Department of Epidemiology investigating sex differences in physiological predictors of aggression. I was tasked with taking an MPH thesis and condensing it into a publishable manuscript. The thesis project looked at how changes in fear-potentiated acoustic startle, resting heart rate, and heart rate variability were correlated with self-reported aggression scores. Although the rotation is technically over, the manuscript is still being polished.
​
For my third rotation project, I worked under Dr. Jennifer Mulle and Dr. Joseph Cubells in the Department of Human Genetics investigating the neuronal phenotype of a rare chromosomal microdeletion called the 3q29 deletion syndrome. This deletion of 22 protein-coding genes on the long arm of chromosome 3 is considered a copy number variant and confers a 40-fold increased risk for schizophrenia and is associated with other cognitive phenotypes.
Picture
Dr. Hales' laboratory
  • Home
  • Art
  • Poetry
    • Grade 11
    • Grade 12
    • College
    • The Rest
  • Prose
  • Research
  • Songs
  • Tourette
  • Teaching
    • NEUR0010
    • Testimonials
  • Contact