About Me
I am a doctoral student in Biostatistics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I am advised by Dr. Zhengqing Ouyang and work with the Ouyang Lab. Previously, during my M.S. training in Statistics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, I worked closely with Prof. Ruoqing Zhu on statistical learning problems in high-dimensional biology, including spatial transcriptomics and dimension reduction. Before that, I completed my B.S. in Mathematics and Applied Mathematics at Beijing Normal University.
My research focuses on statistical and computational methods for high-dimensional biological data, especially spatial transcriptomics and 3D genomics, with particular interest in kernel methods and manifold learning for complex biological systems. I welcome collaborations in these areas and would be glad to connect at chengyudu@umass.edu.
Education
- Doctoral Student in Biostatistics, University of Massachusetts Amherst (Aug 2024 - Present)
- M.S. Student in Computer Science, University of Massachusetts Amherst (Jan 2025 - Present)
- M.S. in Statistics, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (Aug 2022 - May 2024)
- B.S. in Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, Beijing Normal University (Sep 2017 - Jun 2021)
Research Interests
- Spatial Transcriptomics
- 3D Genomics
- Kernel Methods
- Manifold Learning
- High-dimensional Data Analysis
Teaching Experience
University of Massachusetts Amherst (Teaching Assistant, 2025 - 2026)
- BIOSTATS 540: Introductory Biostatistics (Fall 2025)
- BIOSTATS 530: Introduction to Statistical Computing in Data Science using R (Spring 2026)
- BIOSTATS 590B: Introduction to Bayesian Inference (Spring 2026)
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (Teaching Assistant, Fall 2023)
- STAT 432: Basics of Statistical Learning
Publications / Preprints
- Smoothed Dimension Reduction in Spatial Transcriptomics Through Functional Embedding
- Authors: Chengyu Du, Zirui Li, Boyi Guo, Ruoqing Zhu
- Status: Manuscript in preparation
Honors & Awards
- SPHHS Dean’s PhD Fellowship (UMass Amherst, 2024-2026)
- Merit-based Scholarship (BNU, 2018-2021)
Skills
- Programming Languages: Python, R, C++, MATLAB
- Typesetting and Publishing: LaTeX, Markdown
- Developer Tools: VS Code, Shell Scripting
- Languages: Mandarin (Native), English (Fluent)