71874-Yuan, Kai

Kai Yuan, PhD

Assistant Professor of Medical & Molecular Genetics

Address
IB 130
MMGE
IN
Indianapolis, IN

Bio

Kai Yuan, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medical and Molecular Genetics at the Indiana University School of Medicine.

 His research integrates evolutionary genetics, population genetics, statistical genetics, and computational biology to understand how human evolutionary history shapes genetic variation and influences complex diseases. His laboratory develops computational and statistical methods that leverage human genetic diversity to improve genetic discovery and advance precision medicine.

Dr. Yuan received his PhD in Computational Biology from the CAS-MPG Partner Institute for Computational Biology (PICB), Chinese Academy of Sciences, and completed postdoctoral training at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

He is committed to interdisciplinary collaboration, mentoring the next generation of scientists, and developing scalable computational tools for biomedical research.

Learn more about Dr. Yuan's lab here. 

Key Publications

Yang Y, Zhang R, Yang L, Ni X*, Yuan K*, Xu S*. HiMWA: A Hierarchical Multiple-wave Admixture Model for Reconstructing Complex Population Admixture Histories. Genomics, Proteomics & Bioinformatics. 2026.


Yuan K, Longchamps RJ, Pardiñas AF, Yu M, Chen T-T, Weissbrod O, et al. Fine-mapping across diverse ancestries drives the discovery of putative causal variants underlying human complex traits and diseases. Nature Genetics. 2024.


Zhang W*, Yuan K*, Wen R, Li H, Ni X. Reconstruct recent multi-population migration history by using identical-by-descent sharing. Journal of Genetics and Genomics. 2024.


Zhang S*, Zhang R*, Yuan K*, Yang L, Liu C, Liu Y, Ni X, Xu S. Reconstructing complex admixture history using a hierarchical model. Briefings in Bioinformatics. 2024.


Sazonovs A*, Stevens CR*, Venkataraman GR*, Yuan K*, Deffontaine V, Taylor K, et al. Large-scale sequencing identifies multiple genes and rare variants associated with Crohn's disease susceptibility. Nature Genetics. 2022.


Zhang R*, Ni X*, Yuan K*, Pan Y, Xu S. MultiWaverX: modeling latent sex-biased admixture history. Briefings in Bioinformatics. 2022.


Yuan K, Ni X, Liu C, Pan Y, Deng L, Zhang R, Gao Y, Ge X, Liu J, Ma X, Lou H, Wu T, Xu S. Refining models of archaic admixture in Eurasia with ArchaicSeeker 2.0. Nature Communications. 2021;12:6232.

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