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Liran Mao

Ph.D. Candidate in GCB, University of Pennsylvania
M.A. in Statistics & Data Science, Wharton
Liran.Mao(at) Pennmedicine.upenn.edu


About Me

I am a Ph.D. Candidate in Genomics and Computational Biology at the University of Pennsylvania, where I also earned an M.A. in Statistics and Data Science from the Wharton School. My research focuses on digital pathology and spatial multi-omics. Previously, I was a Research Assistant at UT Southwestern Medical Center, Harvard University (Broad Institute), and Peking University. I am actively seeking a summer 2027 internship.

Publications

* co-first authorship, # corresponding author

  1. Under review
    Spatial cell typing from routine histology at population scale
    Liran Mao#, Wei Li, Xiaokang Yu, Shunzhou Jiang, … , Lars Maegdefessel, MacLean P. Nasrallah, Yanxiang Deng, Katalin Susztak, Humam Kadara, Linghua Wang#, Mingyao Li#
    Under review at Cancer Discovery.

  2. Under review
    Computational Landscape and Emerging Frontiers in Spatial Omics
    Liran Mao*, Chuxuan Li*, Shunzhou Jiang, Wei Li, Kaitian Jin, Nancy R. Zhang, Mingyao Li#
    Under review at The Annals of Applied Statistics.

  3. Nature Methods
    Multiplexed spatial mapping of chromatin features, transcriptome and proteins in tissues
    Pengfei Guo*#, Liran Mao*, Yufan Chen, Chin Nien Lee, Angelysia Cardilla, Mingyao Li, Marek Bartosovic# & Yanxiang Deng#
    Nature Methods volume 22, pages 520–529 (2025).

  4. Nature Communications
    Spatial profiling of chromatin accessibility in formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissues
    Pengfei Guo*#, Yufan Chen*, Liran Mao, Angelysia Cardilla, Chin Nien Lee, Yan Cui, Dengge Jin, Yucong Hua, Xiaowei Xu & Yanxiang Deng#
    Nature Communications volume 16, Article number 5945 (2025).

  5. Nature
    Spatial atlas of diabetic kidney disease reveals a B cell-rich subgroup
    Bernhard Dumoulin, Jonathan Levinsohn, Konstantin A. Klötzer, Chenyu Li, Liran Mao, Eunji Ha, Samer Mohandes, Thao Nguyen, Luca Paruzzo, Daigoro Hirohama, Victoria Fang, Vijay G. Bhoj, Hamideh Parhiz, Magaiver Andrade-Silva, Amin Abedini, Andi Bergeson, Daniel Traum, Michael J. May, Klaus H. Kaestner, Marco Ruella, Fiona Elizabeth McAllister, A. Ari Hakimi, Mingyao Li, Matthew Palmer, E. John Wherry, Christopher A. Hunter, Michael Paul Cancro, TRIDENT consortium, and Katalin Susztak
    Nature volume 653, pages 1158–1169 (2026).

  6. Under review
    Toward Computationally Complete Spatial Omics
    Wei Li, Liran Mao, Yunhe Liu, Fuduan Peng, Nadja Sachs, Wenrui Wu, Stephanie Pei Tung Yiu, Hanying Yan, Amelia Schroeder, Xiaokang Yu, Kaitian Jin, Shunzhou Jiang, Zihao Chen, Melanie L. Loth, Lorena Gomez, Idania Lubo, Niklas Blank, Laith Z. Samarah, Ankit Basak, Ye Won Cho, Chia-Yu Chen, David M. Kim, Alex K. Shalek, Luisa Maren Solis Soto, Joshua D. Rabinowitz, Muredach P. Reilly, Xuyu Qian, Christoph A. Thaiss, Lars Maegdefessel, Linghua Wang, Humam Kadara, Sizun Jiang, Yanxiang Deng, Mingyao Li
    Under review at Cell.

  7. Under review
    HistoSweep enables cellular-resolution tissue quality control for gigapixel images in digital pathology and spatial omics
    Amelia Schroeder, Xiaokang Yu, Wei Li, Musu Yuan, Liran Mao, Jiyuan Yang, Nadja Sachs, Bernhard Dumoulin, George X. Xu, Xunda Luo, Alexander Huang, Katalin Susztak, Tae Hyun Hwang, Humam Kadara, Lars Maegdefessel, Jiyang Yu, Mingyao Li
    Under review at Nature Methods.

Experience

Research Experience

Teaching Experience

Other

Education