HUPO 2026 World Congress

Xia Shen
Professor, School of Life Sciences | Sun Yat-sen University

Prof. Xia Shen is a quantitative geneticist working on statistical methods for investigations of the genetic architecture of complex traits and diseases. He received his BSc from School of Statistics at Renmin University of China in 2007, and in 2012, he received his PhD in bioinformatics from the computational genetics group at Uppsala University in Sweden. Early in his career, he received two major competitive grants from the Swedish Research Council and established his line of statistical genetics research. In 2016, he was appointed as a Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, and later next year, he was also appointed as an assistant professor in biostatistics at Karolinska Institute in Sweden. Since 2018, he leads a biostatistics group at Sun Yat-sen University in China. During the past 5 years, his publications have received a total of over 1600 citations, with high-impact works published in prestigious journals such as Nature, Nature Genetics, Nature Communications, and the American Journal of Human Genetics. He is also an active PI in several consortium projects, especially in proteogenomics involving cutting-edge proteomics technologies.

Birgit Schilling
Professor | Buck Institute for Research on Aging

Dr. Birgit Schilling works at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in the San Francisco Bay Area since 2000, where she leads her own laboratory as Professor. She also is the Director of the Mass Spectrometry and Proteomics Technology Center at the Buck Institute, specifically focusing on large-scale proteome quantification and biomarker research. At the Buck Institute Dr. Schilling is interested in translational research and any research that may aim towards therapeutic interventions to improve human aging or age-related diseases, specifically neurodegeneration, osteoarthritis and cancer.

Maria Bueno Alvez
Postdoctoral Researcher | Science for Life Laboratory

Dr. María Bueno Álvez is a bioinformatics and translational proteomics researcher at the Science for Life Laboratory in Stockholm. Her main research focus is the development of the Human Disease Blood Atlas, a large-scale resource for characterizing disease-associated changes in the circulating proteome. Her work involves analysing large-scale plasma proteomics data to identify and characterize protein signatures associated with disease, with a particular interest in early detection and cancer.

Prof. Yu-Ju Chen
Vice President and Distinguished Research Fellow, Institute of Chemistry | Academia Sinica

Yu-Ju Chen, Ph.D., is the Vice President and a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute of Chemistry, Academia Sinica, and an internationally recognized leader in mass spectrometry-based proteomics. Her research combines innovative analytical technologies with translational and clinical research to advance biomarker discovery, cancer biology, and precision medicine. Her work spans ultrasensitive and single-cell proteomics, proteogenomics, and the translation of molecular discoveries toward clinically meaningful applications.

Tiannan Guo
Professor, School of Medicine and School of Life Sciences | Westlake University

Tiannan Guo, Ph.D., is Professor at Westlake University and Director of the Westlake Center for Intelligent Proteomics. His research integrates advanced proteomics, artificial intelligence, and systems biology to address major challenges in human health, including cancer, infectious disease, and aging. His group develops technologies spanning high-throughput and spatial proteomics to AI-enabled virtual cells, with the goal of advancing biological discovery, disease diagnosis, and precision medicine.