Liran Mao | GCB, University of Pennsylvania

About Me

I am a Ph.D. Candidate in Genomics and Computational Biology at the University of Pennsylvania. 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.

Publications

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).

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).

bioRxiv

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

bioRxiv, 2026.

bioRxiv

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

bioRxiv, 2026.

Experience

Research Experience

Research Assistant
University of Pennsylvania (08/2023 - Present)
Advisors: Mingyao Li, Yanxiang Deng
Research Assistant
UT Southwestern Medical Center (10/2022 - 05/2023)
Advisor: Jian Zhou
Research Assistant
Harvard University (02/2022 - 08/2022)
Advisor: Jason Buenrostro
Research Assistant
Peking University (07/2021 - 10/2022)
Advisor: Jingdong Han

Teaching Experience

Teaching Assistant, Microbiology (Fall 2020)
Student Class Teacher
Admitted class of 2021 majoring in biology (2021 - 2022)
Lecturer in Science Popularization (08/2021 - 09/2021)

Other

Vice Chair of Operations, Biomedical Graduate Student Association
University of Pennsylvania (2025 - Present)

Education

Ph.D. in Genomics and Computational Biology
University of Pennsylvania (09/2023 - Present)
Visiting Undergraduate Students Program
Harvard University (01/2022 - 07/2022)
B.A. in Biology Science
Wuhan University (09/2019 - 06/2023)