Pengyi Yang

Associate Professor Pengyi Yang is the Head of the Computational Systems Biology Unit at Children's Medical Research Institute (CMRI), at the Westmead Research Hub. He also heads the Computational Trans-Regulatory Biology group at Charles Perkins Centre (CPC), and holds an Associate Professorship at the School of Mathematics and Statistics, the University of Sydney.

Pengyi received a PhD in Bioinformatics from the School of Computer Science at the University of Sydney in 2012. He subsequently undertook an interdisciplinary Research Fellowship in Systems Biology at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), USA, from 2012 to 2015.

Pengyi returned to Australia after been awarded a University of Sydney Postdoctoral Fellowship in late 2015 and was subsequently awarded an ARC DECRA Fellowship in 2017; a University of Sydney Robinson Fellowship in 2019; and a NHMRC Investigator Grant (Emerging Leadership Level 2) in 2020.

During his NIH Fellowship, Pengyi was awarded the Fellows Award for Research Excellence twice (2014, 2015).

After returning to Australia, he was awarded a J G Russell Award, Australian Academy of Science (2017), a Mid-career Researcher Award, Australian Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Society (2021), and a Metcalf Prizes for Stem Cell Research, National Stem Cell Foundation of Australia (2021).

Current Research

As a systems biologist cross-trained in computer science, statistics, and molecular and systems biology, Pengyi combines computational and statistical methods to model trans-regulatory networks (TRNs) in stem and progenitor cells using large-scale multi-layered omic data (trans-omics). His research contribution is twofold:

• Methodological innovation. The development of novel computational methods for studying cell identity and cell-fate decisions in biological systems and diseases;
• Systems biology. The advancement of knowledge in cell identity and cell-fate decisions during stem cell differentiation and development through innovative application of computational models.

Publications