University of Exeter Medical School

Dr Ji Chen

Dr Ji Chen

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

 J.Chen7@exeter.ac.uk

 

Overview

Ji obtained his Bachelor’s degree (2007) in Math from the Southeast University followed by a Master’s degree (2010) in Probability and Statistics from the Southeast University. He was awarded a PhD in Statistics from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (2013), after which he was appointed as the leader of a bioinformatics group in a biotechnology company (Ribobio). In 2015, he joined Professor Inês Barroso’s team at the Wellcome Sanger Institute to study the genetics of type 2 diabetes and related glycaemic traits. After moving with Professor Barroso, and working as research associate at the MRC Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge (2019), he moved with Professor Barroso to the University of Exeter as a research fellow (2020).

Ji is an expert of data science and has lots of experience in applying statistical methods and models to study genetics data. He has peer-reviewed publications on both statistics and genetics.

Qualifications

  • THE CHINESE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG, Hong Kong, Ph.D. in Statistics (2013)
  • SOUTHEAST UNIVERSITY, China, Master in Probability and Mathematical Statistics (2010)
  • SOUTHEAST UNIVERSITY, China, Bachelor in Applied Mathematics (2007)

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Research

Research interests

Ji is interested in discovering genetic associations with type 2 diabetes and related glycaemic traits, understanding the underlining biology of these associations and using them to improve the diagnosis of diabetes and prediction of diabetes progression. To achieve these aims, his other interests are in studying, improving and developing genetics data analysis methods.

Research projects

  • Genome-wide trans-ancestry analyses of glycaemic traits
  • Trans-ancestry fine-mapping of glycaemic loci
  • HbA1c study using UK Biobank and other cohorts

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Publications

Journal articles

Alonso L, Piron A, Morán I, Chen J, et al. (2021). TIGER: the gene expression regulatory variation landscape of human pancreatic islet.
Chen J, Spracklen CN, Marenne G, Varshney A, Corbin LJ, Luan J, Willems SM, Wu Y, Zhang X, Horikoshi M, et al (2021). The trans-ancestral genomic architecture of glycemic traits. Nat Genet, 53(6), 840-860. Abstract.  Author URL.
Adeyemo AA, Zaghloul NA, Chen G, Doumatey AP, Leitch CC, Hostelley TL, Nesmith JE, Zhou J, Bentley AR, Shriner D, et al (2019). <i>ZRANB3</i> is an African-specific type 2 diabetes locus associated with beta-cell mass and insulin response. NATURE COMMUNICATIONS, 10  Author URL.
Chen J, Sun M, Adeyemo A, Pirie F, Carstensen T, Pomilla C, Doumatey AP, Chen G, Young EH, Sandhu M, et al (2019). Genome-wide association study of type 2 diabetes in Africa. DIABETOLOGIA, 62(7), 1204-1211.  Author URL.
Leong A, Chen J, Wheeler E, Hivert M-F, Liu C-T, Merino J, Dupuis J, Tai ES, Rotter JI, Florez JC, et al (2019). Mendelian Randomization Analysis of Hemoglobin A1c as a Risk Factor for Coronary Artery Disease. Diabetes Care, 42(7), 1202-1208. Abstract.  Author URL.
Ng N, Willems SM, Fernandez J, Fine RS, Wheeler E, Wessel J, Kitajima H, Marenne G, Rundle JK, Sim X, et al (2019). Tissue-Specific Alteration of Metabolic Pathways Influences Glycemic Regulation.
Ouyang M, Yan X, Chen J, Tang N, Song X (2017). Bayesian local influence of semiparametric structural equation models. Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, 111, 102-115.
Liu P, Chen J, Lu Z, Song X (2014). Transformation Structural Equation Models with Highly Nonnormal and Incomplete Data. Structural Equation Modeling: a Multidisciplinary Journal, 22(3), 401-415.
Chen J, Liu P, Song X (2013). Bayesian diagnostics of transformation structural equation models. Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, 68, 111-128.
Lin J-G, Chen J, Li Y (2011). Bayesian Analysis of Student t Linear Regression with Unknown Change-Point and Application to Stock Data Analysis. Computational Economics, 40(3), 203-217.

Conferences

Chen J, on behalf of the MAGIC Investigators (2019). Oral presentation: leveraging ancestry differences for glycaemic trait locus discovery and fine-mapping. European Association for the Study of Diabetes Study Group on the Genetics of Diabetes (EASD-SGGD) 2019 meeting.
Chen J, on behalf of the MAGIC Investigators (2018). Reviewers' selected poster presentation: large trans-ethnic discovery identifies novel loci, and differing genomic and expression signatures between glycemic traits. the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) 2018 Annual meeting.
Adeyemo AA, Sun M, Chen J, Wheeler E, Mahajan A, Pirie F, Doumatey A, Sandhu M, Morris A, Motala A, et al (2017). A Meta-analysis of Genome-Wide Association Studies for Type 2 Diabetes in Africans.  Author URL.
Chen J, on behalf of the MAGIC Investigators (2017). Poster presentation: exploring the use of fuzzy clustering approaches to classify HbA1c associated signals into glycaemic and/or erythrocytic pathways. International Genetic Epidemiology Society (IGES) 2017 Annual meeting.
Chen J, et al. (2016). Poster presentation: improvements in genotype imputation by using a population specific reference panel in Africa. the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) 2016 Annual meeting.

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