Chen Chao, Ph.D., joined Central South University as an associate professor in 2014, and full professor in 2019. He was promoted as deputy dean of School of Life Sciences in 2019. He is a member of the Chinese Medical Association Youth Committee, American Society of Human Genetics, International Society of Psychiatric Genetics. He has published over 30 articles on Science, Science Translational Medicine, Molecular Psychiatry, Bioinformatics, etc. Many papers have been cited over 200 times.

He was funded by NSF for Outstanding Young Scientist in China, the National Key R&D Project of China and other grants. He has won Hugh Gurling Award on World Congress of Psychiatry Genetics (Israel 2016), Charles J. Epstein Trainee Award of American Society of Human Genetics ( United States, 2017), and the winner of Travel Award of the 13th International Congress of Human Genetics (Japan, 2016).

Described by his supervisor Elliot Gershon, former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, “super student… done a lot of bioinformatics and statistical analyses… very self-motivated and doesn't require a lot of supervision.”

Today's biologists are confronted with a flood of data, a fire-hose torrent of genetic and clinical information that only builds with the spread of fast sequencing and electronic medical records. Dr. Chen tries to establish new methods to translate that data bounty into practical knowledge that can revolutionize science and medicine. Dr. Chen's research focuses on integrating diverse data (e.g. genetic, epigenetic, transcriptomic, proteomic data and etc.) into graphic networks, and analyzing next-generation sequencing data for elucidating complex mechanisms of psychiatric disorders, which include 1) method development in integrating diverse high-throughput data into high-dimensional/probabilistic causal network models; 2) QTL studies of epigenetic traits in human brain; 3) method development to interpret microarray and next-generation sequencing data. The results will create novel hypotheses that could alter how experts define and treat neuropsychiatric disorders, to be tested by Dr. Chen and his colleagues from Central South University.