Yufan (Andrew) Liu

Yufan (Andrew) Liu

Ph.D. Candidate in Computer Science
The University of Hong Kong

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at the School of Computing and Data Science, The University of Hong Kong (HKU), where I am fortunate to be advised by Prof. Zhenqin (Michael) Wu.

I completed my M.S. in Biology at the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences and the School of Life Sciences from Tsinghua University, and I hold a B.S. in Biotechnology from Huazhong Agricultural University.

My research interests span AI4Science, bioinformatics, and computational biology, with particular focus on spatial biology, computational genomics, and the design of biological molecules including proteins and small molecules. I am passionate about deep learning algorithms, especially generative modeling approaches. Additionally, I bring hands-on experience in experimental biology from wet lab settings. I actively collaborate with clinical and industrial partners to develop innovative AI solutions for biological and medical applications.

News

[Jul 2025]CLAPE protocol is published in Methods in Molecular Biology.
[Nov 2024]CLAPE-SMB is published in Journal of Cheminformatics.
[Jan 2024]CLAPE-DB is published in Briefings in Bioinformatics.

Selected Publications

# denotes equally contributed, * denotes corresponding author.

Modeling patient tissues at molecular resolution with Eva

bioRxiv 2025

Preprint

Modeling patient tissues at molecular resolution with Eva

Yufan Liu, Rishabh Sharma, Matthew Bieniosek, Amy Kang, Eric Wu, Peter Chou, Irene Li, Maha Rahim, Erica Bauer, Ran Ji, Wei Duan, Li Qian, Ruibang Luo, Padmanee Sharma, Renu Dhanasekaran, Christian M. Schürch, Gregory Charville, Aaron Mayer, James Zou, Alexandro E. Trevino*, Zhenqin Wu*

Protein-small molecule binding site prediction based on a pre-trained protein language model with contrastive learning

Journal of Cheminformatics 2024

Protein-small molecule binding site prediction based on a pre-trained protein language model with contrastive learning

Jue Wang#, Yufan Liu# and Boxue Tian*

Protein-DNA binding sites prediction based on pre-trained protein language model and contrastive learning

Briefings in Bioinformatics 2024

Protein-DNA binding sites prediction based on pre-trained protein language model and contrastive learning

Yufan Liu and Boxue Tian*

RNA editing restricts hyperactive ciliary kinases

Science 2021

RNA editing restricts hyperactive ciliary kinases

Dongdong Li, Yufan Liu, Peishan Yi, Zhiwen Zhu, Wei Li, Qiangfeng Cliff Zhang, Jin Billy Li and Guangshuo Ou*

Education

Mar 2025 - PresentHong Kong

The University of Hong Kong

Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science

Faculty: School of Computing and Data Science

Supervisor: Prof. Zhenqin (Michael) Wu

Sep 2019 - Jun 2023Beijing

Tsinghua University

M.S. in Biology

Faculty: School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, School of Life Sciences

Supervisor: Prof. Boxue Tian and Prof. Guangshuo Ou

Thesis: Prediction of Protein-DNA Binding Sites Based on Deep Learning

Sep 2015 - Jun 2019Wuhan, Hubei

Huazhong Agricultural University

B.S. in Biotechnology

Faculty: College of Life Science and Technology

Supervisor: Prof. Guangshuo Ou

Thesis: Functional Analysis of RNA Editing in C. elegans (completed at Tsinghua, Nov 2018 - May 2019)

Experience

Oct 2024 - Dec 2025Beijing (Remote)

Machine Learning Researcher Guang'anmen Hospital, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences

Advisor: Prof. Kuiwu Yao

Machine learning methods for cardiovascular diseases

May 2021 - Sep 2021Beijing

Machine Learning Intern Tong Ren Hospital, Capital Medical University

Advisor: Prof. Lihui Huang

Machine learning methods for newborn deafness diagnosis

Jul 2018 - Sep 2018Beijing

Undergraduate Research Intern School of Life Sciences, Tsinghua University

Advisor: Prof. Xiao Liu

Bioinformatics analysis for Next-generation Sequencing (NGS) data

Mar 2018 - Nov 2018Wuhan, Hubei

Undergraduate Research Intern College of Informatics, Huazhong Agricultural University

Advisor: Prof. Jingbo Xia

Bioinformatics for bioarray data and biomedical NLP

Talks and Posters

2019-Suzhou-poster·RNA editing restricts hyperactive ciliary kinases

2019-Beijing-poster·Bioinformatics pipeline for RNA editing analysis

2025-HK-poster·SpaFormer: A multi-modal foundation model for spatial proteomics

Awards and Cerficates

[Oct 2022]Certificate, Tsinghua University Big Data Capability Improvement Project
[Aug 2022]Excellence award (Top 6 groups), Outstanding individuals and Certificate, DeeCamp Artificial Intelligence Camp for Life Science
[Dec 2021]Fourth place, Global Antibody Affinity Prediction Competition
[Oct 2021]Excellent Team Award, Practical Course of Tsinghua University Big Data Capability Improvement Project
[Oct 2019]Best Poster Award, The Cold Spring Harbor Asia Conferences
[Oct 2019]Outstanding Undergraduate Graduate, Huazhong Agricultural University
[Sep 2019]Innovation Award for Bachelor's Degree Theses, Huazhong Agricultural University
[2016-2018]National Encouragement Scholarship, Huazhong Agricultural University
[2016-2019]Merit Student, Huazhong Agricultural University

Teaching

Fall 2025-Introduction to data science (CS2501A)-HKU, Hong Kong

Service

Conference reviewer - AAAI (25'), ICLR (25', DeLTa 25', 26'), ICML (24', 25'), NerIPS (24', 25'), AISTATS (25', 26'), ICCV (CVAMD 25')

Journal reviewer - Nature Communications