Liu Fan

Biography

Dr.LIU Fan is a professor at Beijing Institute of Genomics (BIG), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). He is also an adjunct assistant professor at the Department of Forensic Molecular Biology, Erasmus University Medical Center Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He was rewarded by a prestige Chinese talent program “1000 Talents Program for Young Scholars" in 2015. Dr. LIU received his bachelor degree in clinical medicine from Shandong Medical University in China. He obtained his MSc, DSc, and PhD degrees in genetic epidemiology from Erasmus University Medical Center Rotterdam, the Netherlands (promotor: Prof. Dr. Cornelia van Duijn). In 2009, Dr. LIU pursued his postdoctoral research at the Department of Forensic Molecular Biology, Erasmus University Medical Center Rotterdam (department head: Prof. Dr. Manfred Kayser). Dr. LIU was promoted to assistant professor with tenure in Dec-2012. Over years, Dr. LIU continues to make excellent scientific achievements including multiple key authorship papers in top ranked scientific journals such as Am J Hum Genet, Current Biology, PLoS Genetics, Human Genetics, and overall over 40 papers published on internationally peer reviewed SCI journals where he served as a key author or co-author. He led an entire research line in identifying genes and developing predictive DNA markers for human appearance traits; his work laid the foundation for two DNA test systems, one for predicting eye color and another for predicting eye and hair color in parallel, which are already in use for forensic and anthropological applications internationally. His excellent research profile earned him the Erasmus University Fellowship award. LIU’s background in clinical medicine, epidemiology, genomics, and forensics has provided him a unique opportunity to decipher the cryptic links between genomic variation and human complex phenotypes.

Research Interest

Precision Medicine (PM) holds the great promise to revolutionize the current practice in health care. One important component of PM is the use of an individual’s genomic information to offer the individual most effective treatment or preventive schema for certain diseases. It is thus critical to better understand how genomic information can be translated to human phenotypes and disease. In the Key Laboratory of Genomic and Precision Medicine, Beijing Institute of Genomics, we aim to study the complex structure of the human genome and various types of genetic and non-genetic variation; develop efficient and powerful pipelines to uncover associations between genome variation and human complex traits including common diseases; and to access the use of next-generation sequencing for solving diagnostic dilemmas. Our research lines also have a clinical focus, where we aim to develop and evaluate the clinical utility of new tests; prenatal carrier testing and newborn screening for Mendelian diseases; predictive tests for common and complex diseases; and pharmacogenomic testing for selecting the most effective drug with the minimal adverse effect. Besides medicine related applications, we aim to develop prediction models for human externally visible traits that are useful in forensic investigations.