Biography

Professor Chao Tang received his B.S. degree from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1981, and Ph.D. degree from the University of Chicago in 1986. He worked at Brookhaven National Lab and Institute for Theoretical Physics, UCSB as a postdoctoral fellow, and at NEC Research Institute, Princeton, as a Research Scientist and Senior Research Scientist. In 2005, he joined the University of California, San Francisco as a full professor in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences and the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics. He came back to China in 2011 as a Chair Professor in School of Physics and Dean of Academy for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies at Peking University. He served in numerous national and international advisory committees, including Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen and NSF Center for Theoretical Biological Physics at UCSD, and was chair of theselection committee for American Physical Society Delbruck Prize for Biological Physics. He isDirector of the Department of Interdisciplinary Sciences, National Science Foundation of China, and founding Co-Editor-in-Chief of the journalQuantitative Biology. He was elected Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2019.He Joined Westlake University in April, 2024, and is currently Chair Professor and Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies (CIS).

Research

Our research interests include quantitative biology, biological physics, and complex systems. We employ theoretical, computational, machine learning, and experimental tools. Current research areas include: design principles in biological systems; robustness and precision in development, metabolic reprograming in cancer, and calcium oscillation in islets.

Representative Publications

1. P. Bak, C. Tang, and K. Wiesenfeld, “Self-organized criticality: An explanation of1/fnoise,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 59 (4) (1987), 381-384.

2. H. Li, R. Helling, C. Tang, and N. Wingreen, “Emergence of preferred structures in a simple model of protein folding,” Science 273 (5275) (1996), 666-669.

3. F. Li, Y. Lu, T. Long, Q. Ouyang, and C. Tang, “The yeast cell-cycle network is robustly designed,” Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 101 (14) (2004), 4781-4786.

4. W. Ma, A. Trusina, H. El-Samad, W. Lim, and C. Tang, “Defining network topology that can perform biochemical adaptation,”Cell138 (4) (2009), 760-773.

5. J. Shu, C. Wu, Y. T. Wu, Z. Li, S. D. Shao, W. H. Zhao, X. Tang, H. Yang, L. J. Shen, X. H. Zuo, W. F. Yang, Y. Shi, X. C. Chi, H. Q. Zhang, G. Gao, Y. M. Shu, K. H. Yuan, W. W. He, C. Tang, Y. Zhao and H. K. Deng, “Induction of pluripotency in mouse somatic cells with lineage specifiers,” Cell 153 (5) (2013), 963-975.

6. X. Wang, K. Xia, X, Yang, and C. Tang, “Growth strategy of microbes on mixed carbon sources,” Nature Communications 10:1279 (2019).

7. J. Shen, F. Liu, Y. Tu, C. Tang, “Finding gene network topologies for given biological function with recurrent neural network,” Nature Communications 12:3125 (2021).

8. H.Ren, Y. Li, C. Han, Y. Yu, B. Shi, X. Peng,T. Zhang,S. Wu, X. Yang, S. Kim, L. Chen, and C. Tang, “Pancreatic alpha and beta cells are globally phase-locked,” Nature Communications (2022) 13:3721.

9. J. Shen, F. Liu, and C. Tang, “Scaling dictates the decoder structure,” Science Bulletin 67, no. 14 (2022): 1486-1495.

10. X. Kuang, G. Guan, M.-K. Wong, L.-Y. Chan, Z. Zhao, C. Tang, and L. Zhang, “Computable early Caenorhabditis elegans embryo with a phase field model,” PLOS Computational Biology 18(1) (2022): e1009755.

Contact Us

Email：tangchao@westlake.edu.cn

We are actively seeking Postdocs and Research Assistants, please see more detailed instructions on how to apply:

1. Postdoctoral position in Chao Tang's Group, Center for Interdisciplinary Studies-Center For Interdisciplinary Studies (westlake.edu.cn)

2. Research Assistants：西湖大学交叉科学中心汤超课题组科研助理招聘启事-西湖大学交叉科学中心官网 (westlake.edu.cn)