Dr Shu-Dong Zhang, Northern Ireland Centre for Stratified Medicine, Ulster University, Northern Ireland

Dr Shu-Dong Zhang is a Senior Lecturer in Stratified Medicine (Bioinformatics/Statistics) and a Principal Investigator at the Northern Ireland Centre for Stratified Medicine (NICSM), Ulster University. With over 15 years of experience in bioinformatics and genomics, his research involves the development of bioinformatics techniques and their applications in several disease areas including cancers, genetic disorders and inflammatory diseases. Over the past several years, a major theme of his research has been gene expression connectivity mapping and its applications to drug repurposing, supported through competitive grants by major UK research councils (BBSRC, MRC, and EPSRC) and leading charities (including Cancer Research UK, British Lung Foundation, Leukaemia & Lymphoma NI). This has provided a novel and promising approach to the inhibition of disease states, and has led to a number of successes in targeting key genes of interest with small molecule drugs, including recently the application of connectivity mapping to cystinosis as a target disease with some promising results. Dr Zhang has been actively involved in collaborative projects with biomedical and clinical PIs internationally, providing bioinformatics expertise and statistical advice to colleagues and collaborators. He makes regular contributions to the research communities by serving on the editorial boards of scientific journals, and acting as reviewers for research papers and grant applications.