Dr. Gao joined the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) in 2024 as a Program Director in the Office of Genomic Data Science. Prior to joining NHGRI, she was a Program Director for four years in the Division of Biological Infrastructure at National Science Foundation (NSF). She was the lead Program Director managing grant portfolios related to bioinformatics and computational biology. She also co-initiated and managed several foundation-wide new programs including Mid-Career Advancement, Dark Dimensions for the RNA Regulome Ideas Lab, and Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems.
Dr. Gao had been a tenured full professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of Texas at Arlington for 22 years. Her research focuses on developing efficient algorithms to solve large scale data analytics problems in basic medicine and in clinical settings while making theoretical and fundamental contributions to machine learning, data mining, artificial intelligence, statistical pattern recognition, and computer vision. Her research discoveries have been reported in over 180 peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings.
She has been the Associate Editor for IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics (TCBB) since 2008. She has also served as the Chair of the Steering Committee for TCBB. She was the recipient of prestigious National Science Foundation Early Career Award. Dr. Gao is a Lifetime Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).
She received her Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Purdue University, her MS and BS degrees both in Biomedical Engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and Shanghai Medical University, respectively.
