Research Team

Dr Cheong Xin Chan is a Senior Research Fellow and an Australian Centre for Ecogenomics team leader at The University of Queensland’s School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences. He has a PhD in Genomics and Computational Biology from UQ (2008). He did a postdoctoral stint at Rutgers University (New Jersey, USA) working on evolutionary genomics of algae, and was one of the three inaugural Great Barrier Reef Foundation bioinformatics fellows (2013-2016) within the Reef Future Genomics (ReFuGe) 2020 Consortium to generate reference genomic resources from the Great Barrier Reef. His team uses advanced computational and bioinformatic approaches to understand microbial genome evolution, with a strong focus on Symbiodiniaceae dinoflagellates (that encompass diverse coral reef symbionts) and their relatives. Chan has a longstanding research interest on genome evolution of these dinoflagellates relative to their evolutionary transition between free-living and symbiotic lifestyles, and its functional implications on the adaptation of coral holobionts in changing environments. His research routinely involves de novo assembly and analysis of high-throughput sequencing data from idiosyncratic genomes, and the development of highly scalable phylogenomic approaches.