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Yu-Chih Chen, PhD

  • Assistant Professor, Department of Computational and Systems Biology and UPMC Hillman Cancer Center

Yu-Chih Chen received his dual bachelor degrees in Electrical Engineering and Law from the National Taiwan University, Taipei in 2008, his Ph.D. degree in Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2014, where he continued to work as a research faculty in both Electrical & Computer Engineering Department and Forbes Institute for Cancer Discovery. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computational and Systems Biology and UPMC Hillman Cancer Center at the ​University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. He is also affiliated with Joint CMU-Pitt Ph.D. Program in Computational Biology. He is the recipient of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) Outstanding Student Research Award (2008), Orenstein Ph.D. Fellowship (2009), Best Post-Doctoral Speaker Award in Microfluidics in Biomedical Sciences Training Program, UMich (2015), and Emerging Forbes Scholar selected by Forbes Institute for Cancer Discovery (2017).

Representative Publications

  1. Yu-Chih Chen*, Maria E. Gonzalez*, Boris Burman, Xintao Zhao, Talha Anwar, Mai Tran, Natasha Medhora, Ayse B. Hiziroglu, Woncheol Lee, Yu-Heng Cheng, Yehyun Choi, Euisik Yoon, Celina G. Kleer, “Mesenchymal stem/stromal cell engulfment reveals metastatic advantage in breast cancer,” Cell Reports, 27, 3916–3926, 2019.
  2. Yu-Heng Cheng*, Yu-Chih Chen*, Eric Lin*, Riley Brien, Yu-Ting Chen, Zhijian Hao, Woncheol Lee, Hyun Min Kang, Jason Cong, Monika Burness, Sunitha Nagrath, Max Wicha, and Euisik Yoon, “Hydro-Seq Enables Contamination-free High-throughput Single-cell RNA-sequencing for Circulating Tumor Cells,” Nature Communications, 10, 2163, 2019.
  3. Zhixiong Zhang, Lili Chen, Yimin Wang, Tiantian Zhang, Yu-Chih Chen*, and Euisik Yoon*, "Label-free Estimation of Therapeutic Efficacy on 3D Cancer Spheres Using Convolutional Neural Network Image Analysis," Analytical Chemistry, 91, 21, 14093-14100, 2019.
  4. Yu-Chih Chen, Zhixiong Zhang, and Euisik Yoon, “Early Prediction of Single-cell Derived Sphere Formation Using Convolutional Neural Network Image Analysis,” Analytical Chemistry, 92, 11, 7717– 7724, 2020.
  5. Yu-Chih Chen*, Hyoung Won Baac*, Kyu-Tae Lee, Shamileh Fouladdel, Kendall Teichert, Jong G. Ok, Yu-Heng Cheng, Patrick N. Ingram, A. John Hart, Ebrahim Azizi, L. Jay Guo, Max S. Wicha, and Euisik Yoon, “Selective photo-mechanical detachment and retrieval of divided sister cells from enclosed microfluidics for downstream analyses,” ACS Nano, 11 (5), 4660–4668, 2017.

Research Interests

  • Single-Cell Analysis
  • Machine Learning
  • Drug Screening
  • Cell Migration
  • Circulating Tumor Cells

Research Grants

Funding track-records:

“Discover Key Metastatic Regulators by Sequencing Migratory Breast Cancer Cells” Magee Women’s Research Institute.

“Label-free Estimation of Therapeutic Efficacy of 3D Cancer Spheres Using CNN Image Analysis Cells” Pitt Clinical and Translational Science Institute