Rongxin Fang

Rongxin Fang received his Ph.D. in Bioinformatics and Systems Biology from the University of California, San Diego, under the mentorship of Bing Ren (2015–2019). During his doctoral training, he developed high-throughput genomic technologies and computational tools to map the structure and activity of the mammalian genome at large scale and single-cell resolution. He then applied these approaches to investigate how cis-regulatory elements - such as enhancers - control gene expression and drive the diverse transcriptional programs underlying cellular diversity in the mammalian brain. As an HHMI–Damon Runyon Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University (2019–2024), he worked with Xiaowei Zhuang. Rongxin developed and applied genome-scale, volumetric 3D transcriptome imaging methods to map the molecular and cellular architecture of the mammalian brain across evolution and aging. He also contributed to the collaboration with Adam Cohen and Catherine Dulac to integrate transcriptome imaging with functional neuronal imaging, identifying neuronal populations in the animal brain that underlie specific brain functions.