Tao Huan
Associate Professor
Chemistry
Faculty of Science
Dr. Huan is an Associate Professor in Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry. He received his Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Alberta under the supervision of Dr. Liang Li on developing chemical isotope labelling liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry-based metabolomics. After graduation, Dr. Huan did postdoctoral work with Dr. Gary Siuzdak at the Scripps Research Institute (La Jolla, CA) to create metabolomics-guided systems biology for an in-depth understanding of disease mechanisms. In July 2018, Dr. Huan was hired in the Department of Chemistry at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Huan is currently a steering committee and faculty member of UBC Social Exposome Cluster. In addition, Dr. Huan is affiliated faculty members in the Graduate Program in Bioinformatics, Genome Science and Technology (GSAT) program, Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, and Cluster for Microplastics, Health and the Environment (Google Scholar Profile; Twitter ). Outside of the lab, Dr. Huan loves volleyball, motorcycle, and IPA beer.
At UBC, Dr. Huan and his team has established a multidisciplinary research program to further advance the analytical performance of mass spectrometry in global metabolomics and bring metabolomics into systems biology. Dr. Huan’s research interests include:
- Integration of metabolomics with other ‘omics’ (epigenomics, genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics) data for the systems-level interrogation of biological problems
- Application of state-of-art metabolomics technologies in various biological challenges, such as mechanistic understanding of cancer metabolism and disease biomarker discovery
- Synergetic development of analytical and bioinformatic techniques to enhance metabolomic coverage and improve the confidence of metabolite identification.