Personal Profile
Rui Dong received her B.S. in Mathematics from Sun Yat-sen University in 2015 and her Ph.D. in Mathematics from Tsinghua University in 2020, under the supervision of Prof. Stephen S.-T. Yau. After completing her doctorate, she conducted postdoctoral research at the Yau Mathematical Sciences Center, Tsinghua University (mentor: Prof. Donald Rubin) and at the Columbia University Irving Medical School (mentor: Prof. Suzanne M. Leal). She served as Instructor at Columbia University Irving Medical School Department of Neurology from October 2024, and is currently an Associate Professor at the Hetao Institute of Mathematics and Interdisciplinary Sciences (Shenzhen) (HIMIS). Her research focuses on statistical genetics, with a commitment to developing statistical methods that integrate genome-wide association studies (GWAS) with transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and other omics data to investigate the genetic mechanisms underlying complex traits such as Alzheimer's disease.
Research interest
Statistical genetics
Causal inference
Omics data analysis
Educational background
2015–2020 Ph.D. in Mathematics, Tsinghua University (Advisor: Prof. Stephen S.-T. Yau)
2011–2015 B.S. in Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, Sun Yat-sen University
Work experience
Apr 2026–present: Associate Professor, Hetao Institute of Mathematics and Interdisciplinary Sciences (Shenzhen)
Oct 2024–Mar 2026: Instructor, Columbia University Irving Medical School (Department of Neurology)
Mar 2023–Sep 2024: Postdoctoral Research Scientist, Columbia University Irving Medical School (Mentor: Prof. Suzanne M. Leal)
Aug 2020–Jan 2023: Postdoctoral Research Scientist, Yau Mathematical Sciences Center, Tsinghua University/Yanqi Lake Beijing Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Applications (Mentor: Prof. Donald Rubin)
Honorary Awards
Top Poster Prize, Postdoc Research Symposium, Columbia University (2023)
ICCM Best Thesis Award (Doctoral Dissertation), Silver Prize (2022)
Outstanding Graduate of Beijing (2020)
First Prize Scholarship, Tsinghua University (2018, 2019)
Honorable Mention, Mathematical Contest in Modeling (2012–2014)
First Prize Scholarship, Sun Yat-sen University (2011–2015)
Publications: Journal articles
[1] Dong R, Wang TG, DeWan AT, Leal SM (2025) The case-only design: a powerful approach to detect interactions that should be used with caution: the impact of disease prevalence and other factors on type I and II errors. BMC Genomics, 26(1): 222.
[2] Cornejo-Sanchez DM, Bharadwaj T, Dong R, Wang GT, Schrauwen I, DeWan AT, Leal SM (2025) Mendelian non-syndromic and syndromic hearing loss genes contribute to presbycusis. European Journal of Human Genetics, 1-10.
[3 Dong R*, Hu T*, Zhang Y, Li Y, Zhou XH (2022) Assessing the transmissibility of the new SARS-CoV-2 variants: from Delta to Omicron. Vaccines, 10(4): 496.
[4] Dong R, Pei S, Guan M, Yau SC, Yin C, He RL, Yau SST (2022) Full chromosomal relationships between populations and the origin of humans. Frontiers in Genetics, 12: 828805.
[5] Dong R*, Pei S*, Yin C, He RL, Yau SST (2020) Analysis of the hosts and transmission paths of SARS-CoV-2 in the COVID-19 outbreak. Genes, 11(6): 637.
[6] Pei S, Dong R, Bao Y, He RL, Yau SST (2020) Classification of genomic components and prediction of genes of Begomovirus based on subsequence natural vector and support vector machine. PeerJ, 8:e9625.
[7] He L, Dong R, He RL, Yau SST (2020) Positional correlation natural vector: a novel method for genome comparison. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 21(11): 3859.
[8] He L*, Dong R*, He RL, Yau SST (2020) A novel alignment-free method for HIV-1 subtype classification. Infection, Genetics and Evolution, 77: 104080.
[9] Sun N*, Dong R*, Pei S, Yin C, Yau SST (2020) A new method based on coding sequence density to cluster bacteria. Journal of Computational Biology, 27(12): 1688-1698.
[10] Dong R, He L, He RL, Yau SST (2019) A novel approach to clustering genome sequences using inter-nucleotide covariance. Frontiers in Genetics, 10:234.
[11] Pei S, Dong R, He RL, Yau SST (2019) Large-scale genome comparison based on cumulative Fourier power and phase spectra: central moment and covariance vector. Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal, 17:982-994.
[12 Dong R*, Zhu Z*, Yin C, He RL, Yau SST (2018) A new method to cluster genomes based on cumulative Fourier power spectrum. Gene, 673:239-250.
[13] Dong R, Zheng H, Tian K, Yau SC, Mao W, Yu W, Yin C, Yu C, He RL, Yang J, Yau SST (2017) Virus database and online inquiry system based on natural vectors. Evolutionary Bioinformatics, 13:1-7.
* Co-first author
Conference Presentations
The case-only design: the rare disease assumption (Nov 2023), 75th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics, Washington DC, USA
Assessing the transmissibility of the new SARS-CoV-2 variants: from Delta to Omicron (Aug 2022), 9th International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians, Nanjing, China
Full chromosomal relationships between populations and the origin of humans (Dec 2021), Tsinghua Sanya International Mathematics Forum, Sanya, China
Statistical methods for Alzheimer's disease gene-mapping in large cohort studies (Jul 2021), 1st Youth Forum, Peking University Chongqing Institute of Big Data, Chongqing, China
A novel approach to clustering genome sequences using inter-nucleotide covariance (Jun 2019), 8th International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians, Beijing, China