Ryan R. Cheng

Ryan Cheng received his Ph.D. from UT Austin under the supervision of Dmitrii E. Makarov, studying the conformational rearrangements of long polymer chains using theory and simulations. He worked as a postdoc at the Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (Rice University) under the supervision of José N. Onuchic, focusing on biophysical problems in the areas of amino acid coevolution, protein folding, and chromosome organization. His research is highly interdisciplinary, integrating computer simulations, biopolymer theory, statistical mechanics, and machine learning to investigate the physical principles underlying genome organization and transcriptional regulation. The Cheng research group seeks to uncover how genetic material is spatially organized within eukaryotic cell nuclei and how biomolecular interactions shape this organization to influence gene expression, genome maintenance, and cellular function. By combining computational modeling with theoretical approaches, their work aims to bridge molecular-scale processes with emergent biological phenomena.