Postdoctoral Scholar, Stanford University
Evals · Agents · AI for Science
San Francisco, California, USA
I am a Postdoctoral Scholar at Stanford University in the Department of Biomedical Data Science, working on AI agents, evaluations, and AI for science. I completed my PhD in Quantitative Life Sciences at McGill University (December 2025), advised by Prof. Sirui Zhou, where I built protein–disease atlases using proteogenomic approaches to identify causal proteins for complex diseases and nominate drug targets. Before that, I completed my MSc in Computer Science at McGill (2022), supervised by Prof. Joelle Pineau (Meta's former Global VP of AI) and Prof. Brent Richards (CEO of 5 Prime Sciences), affiliated with Mila – Quebec AI Institute, the Reasoning and Learning Lab, and the Lady Davis Institute, and my BSc in Computer Science & Biology at McGill (2020).
My research is supported by an Anthropic AI for Science Rare Disease Research Grant ($50,000 USD in Claude compute credits), a Postdoctoral Research Scholarship from the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Santé (FRQS) ($110,000 CAD; ranked 2nd of 15 applications in committee), and a Biswas Family Foundation Fast Grant ($25,000 USD) — seed funding from Sanjit Biswas’s foundation; the inaugural program funded 37 of 685 applications worldwide (5.4%). My PhD was funded by a Canada Graduate Scholarship – Doctoral (CGS-D; $113,333 CAD), an FRQS Doctoral Training Fellowship ($96,000 CAD), and a Lady Davis Institute / TD Bank Studentship ($20,000 CAD) — over $450K CAD in total funding, alongside 56 additional honors and awards.
Supported by
Anthropic
FRQS
Biswas Family Foundation
CIHR
Lady Davis Institute
TD Bank
I have contributed to 55 publications (35 research articles and 20 correspondence articles) published or accepted in peer-reviewed venues including ICLR, NeurIPS, The New England Journal of Medicine, Nature Genetics, Nature Metabolism, Nature Communications, The Lancet Haematology, European Heart Journal, JAMA, Diabetes Care, and Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. I have given invited talks at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Stanford University School of Medicine, Academia Sinica (Genomics Research Center, Taiwan), the National Taiwan University, and the Banff International Research Station.
I am an elected member of the Young Investigators Committee of the International Genetic Epidemiology Society, and an investment fellow at HaloHealth. Previously, I was the first Canadian intern at Hinge Health (since IPO'd, raising $437.3M) and a world finalist in the $500K USD XPRIZE Pandemic Response Challenge.
Selected first-author and co-first-author works. *Equal contribution; ¶corresponding author. Full list of publications on Google Scholar.
Disentangling osteoarthritis-specific genetic effects from obesity to identify novel therapeutic targets
Nature Communications, accepted 2026
🏆 Presented as an invited oral at TAGC 2025 (UW–Madison) — the only Canadian invited
Multi-ancestry proteome-phenome-wide Mendelian randomization offers a comprehensive protein–disease atlas and potential therapeutic targets
Genome Medicine, under revision
[medRxiv] [Protein–disease atlas]
🏆 ASHG 2024 Platform Talk (top 10% of ~3,500 abstracts) · Roger Williams Award Finalist, IGES 2024 · atlas hosted with the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard's Common Metabolic Disease Knowledge Portal
Machine-learning models to predict iron recovery after blood donation: a model development and external validation study
The Lancet Haematology, 2025
Multi-ancestry proteogenomic analysis identifies risk proteins for intracranial aneurysms
Communications Biology, under revision
🏆 Best Abstract Award, Canadian Society of Vascular Medicine, Canadian Cardiovascular Congress 2025
Disentangling adiposity-related and non-adiposity-related genetic pathways for type 2 diabetes
Diabetes, under review
🏆 ASHG 2026 Platform Talk (~top 7% of accepted abstracts)
Genetic evidence prioritizes circulating proteins for heart failure beyond shared BMI-related genetic liability
eBioMedicine, submitted
Positive-control Mendelian randomization highlights power constraints in disease-mortality GWAS
Nature Genetics (Correspondence), submitted
Systematic variant-to-gene mapping highlights TGFB2 and VEGFA as adipokine-coding genes with non-obese insulin resistance characteristics and distinct cardiometabolic disease risks
Communications Biology, under review
Regularized Inverse Reinforcement Learning
ICLR, 2021 · also a NeurIPS Deep RL Workshop paper, 2020
🏆 Spotlight Presentation (167/2,977 = top 5.6%)
Semaglutide in Metabolic Dysfunction–Associated Steatohepatitis
The New England Journal of Medicine, 2025
Screening for Prostate Cancer with a Polygenic Risk Score
The New England Journal of Medicine, 2025
Plus 18 additional correspondence articles in Diabetes Care, European Heart Journal, Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, Kidney International, Nephrology, International Journal of Cardiology, and other journals — full list on my Google Scholar.
Anthropic
Grantee talk on my Anthropic-funded project
Academia Sinica, Taiwan — 2026 Genomic Epidemiology Workshop
"AI-Driven Integration of Multi-Omics Data: Examples and Demo" (75-minute invited lecture)
Invited by Dr. Yi-Hsiang Hsu (Harvard Medical School). Organized by the Genomics Research Center and Biomedical Translation Research Center, Academia Sinica; co-organized by the Taiwan Epidemiology Association and Taiwan Biobank.
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard — Benjamin Neale Lab & Analytic and Translational Genetics Unit (ATGU)
"Integrating Human Genetics and Proteomics to Prioritize Therapeutic Targets Across Complex Diseases" (60-minute talk)
ATGU-wide candidate research talk, given during an invited and financially supported 3-day research visit.
Stanford University School of Medicine — Michael P. Snyder Lab
"From Genetic Evidence to Dynamic Precision Health: Multi-ancestry proteogenomics for biomarkers, mechanisms, and actionable targets" (45-minute talk + Q&A)
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard — Pradeep Natarajan Lab
"Proteogenomics for target discovery in complex diseases with applications to cardiometabolic and vascular traits" (45-minute talk + Q&A)
Academia Sinica, Taiwan — 2025 Genomic Epidemiology Workshop
"AI-Driven Integration of Multi-Omics Data: Opportunities and Challenges" (75-minute invited lecture)
Invited by Dr. Yi-Hsiang Hsu (Harvard Medical School).
McGill University — Alan Edwards Centre for Research on Pain
"Exploring causal relationships in genetics: Mendelian randomization" (60-minute workshop)
National Taiwan University — Monthly Talks on Poly-omics & Precision Medicine
"Leveraging large-scale human genetics and multi-omics analysis for drug target discovery" (50-minute talk + Q&A)
Invited by Dr. Pei-Lung Chen (Director, Graduate Institute of Medical Genomics and Proteomics, NTU). [Video]
Montreal Genomics Meeting — CHU Sainte-Justine
"Proteogenomics for drug target discovery"
Invited by Dr. Guillaume Lettre (Montreal Heart Institute / Université de Montréal).
Banff International Research Station (BIRS) — "Statistical, Computational, Translational, and Ethical Challenges in Biobank Data Analysis" workshop
"Multi-ancestry proteome-wide Mendelian randomization offers a comprehensive protein–disease atlas and potential therapeutic targets"
By invitation only. [Video]
Long COVID Web — Pillar 1 Monthly Meeting (national research network)
"Combining proteomics and metabolomics to identify signatures protective of neurological consequences of post-acute SARS-CoV-2 infection"
Over $450K CAD in research funding and $50,000 USD in Claude compute credits from Anthropic, plus 56 additional honors and awards.
Stanford University
Oct 2026 – Present
University of Wisconsin–Madison
Apr 2026 – Oct 2026
McGill University
Jan 2026 – Mar 2026
McGill University
Sep 2022 – Dec 2025
Hinge Health
May 2022 – Sep 2022
McGill University
Sep 2020 – May 2022
Mila – Quebec AI Institute
Feb 2020 – Aug 2020
McGill University
Sep 2016 – May 2020
I was born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, and spent my childhood growing up there as well as in Arlington, Texas; Bellevue, Washington; and Victoria, British Columbia. I completed my high school education in Vancouver, British Columbia, and moved to Montréal, Québec, where I completed my undergraduate, master’s, and PhD.
I speak English, Mandarin, and Taiwanese (all native), along with basic French. In my spare time, I enjoy anything fitness-related, dancing, karaoke, watching cooking videos on YouTube, and trying new foods.
“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved, and always will solve, the problems of the human race.” — Calvin Coolidge, as recited in The Founder (2016)
“Work harder on yourself than you do on your job.”— Jim Rohn
“Don’t wish it were easier. Wish you were better.”— Jim Rohn
“We become what we think about.”— Earl Nightingale
“It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
musings
About a thousand high-school students in Turkey practised maths with GPT-4. Their practice scores rose 48%, and then they scored 17% lower on the exam than classmates who had used only a textbook. Routine work used to make two things at once, the output someone paid for and the expert nobody paid for, and AI can now deliver the first without the second.
In 1847 a Vienna doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis made medical students wash their hands, and deaths among new mothers in his clinic fell by almost 90%. Two years later he was out of a job. Stanford professor Jeffrey Pfeffer argues that doing good work and getting people to adopt it are two different skills, and that the second one can be learned.
Reid Hoffman says social networks do best when they tap into one of the seven deadly sins. The sins explain why someone signs up. They explain much less about what happens to that person afterward.
The best way to reach me is by email: cysu [at] stanford [dot] edu