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ZC

Biography

I am a cancer data scientist working at the intersection of deep learning and large-scale molecular biology. I read Computer Science at Monash University, graduating top of my cohort, then spent several years building electronic-trading systems at Goldman Sachs before moving into cancer research. I completed my PhD in Cancer Data Science at the University of Sydney and the Children's Medical Research Institute (CMRI), where I am now a Cancer Institute NSW Early Career Fellow and Senior Data Scientist; I also hold an Adjunct Lecturer appointment at the University of Sydney.

My research develops federated, generative, and transformer-based deep-learning methods for cancer multi-omics. As co-first author of the Cancer Cell pan-cancer proteomic map of 949 human cancer cell lines, I helped build one of the field's most widely used resources. My first-author publications introduced federated deep learning for privacy-preserving cancer subtyping — the first application of federated deep learning to cancer proteomics, spanning some 7,500 proteomes (Cancer Discovery) — and MOSA, a generative-AI approach to synthetic augmentation of multi-omic datasets (Nature Communications). I maintain active international collaborations with the Wellcome Sanger Institute (UK) and the University of Lisbon (Portugal).

In 2025 I was awarded a Cancer Institute NSW Early Career Fellowship as sole chief investigator, supporting a three-year programme on proteomic foundation models integrated with federated learning for multi-hospital cancer research. Throughout, my goal is to translate advanced computational methods into practical tools that improve cancer diagnosis and prognosis through precision oncology.

Professional appointments

  1. Cancer Institute NSW Early Career Fellow · Senior Data Scientist

    Children's Medical Research Institute · Westmead
    Feb 2023 — Present
    • Develop new deep learning-based approaches to incorporate human knowledge for multi-omic data integration
    • Design and build multi-view VAE models customised for multi-omic data integration
    • Perform end-to-end whole exome/genome sequencing data analyses for germline/somatic mutations, copy number variations and structural variants
    • Perform end-to-end proteomic data analyses, including data QC, peptide-to-protein rollup, pre-processing, differential expression analysis, pathway analysis and survival analysis
    • Integrate histopathological images with proteomic data to improve diagnosis
  2. Adjunct Lecturer

    University of Sydney · Sydney
    June 2026 — Present
    • Faculty of Medicine and Health
    • Promoted from Conjoint Associate Lecturer (2023–2026)
  3. Conjoint Associate Lecturer

    University of Sydney · Sydney
    June 2023 — June 2026
    • Faculty of Medicine and Health
  4. PhD Candidate

    University of Sydney / CMRI · Sydney
    Mar 2020 — Feb 2023
    • Thesis: Large-Scale and Pan-Cancer Proteogenomic Analyses with Machine Learning
    • Sydney Cancer Partners PhD Scholarship recipient
  5. Data Scientist

    Children's Medical Research Institute · Westmead
    Jan 2019 — Feb 2020
    • Built pipelines using existing models for single-cell RNA-seq analysis in mouse developmental biology
    • Built deep learning models for live-cell imaging data analysis
  6. Analyst Programmer

    Goldman Sachs · Melbourne
    Nov 2014 — Dec 2017
    • Communicated with business stakeholders and liaised regarding project scope with ongoing updates
    • Designed/developed/tested/deployed system solutions specialised in Goldman Sachs Electronic Trading (GSET) business flow
    • Provided production support and maintained the health of the testing environment

Qualifications

2020 – 2023

Doctor of Philosophy (Cancer Data Science)

University of Sydney / Children’s Medical Research Institute

Thesis: Large-Scale and Pan-Cancer Proteogenomic Analyses with Machine Learning. Sydney Cancer Partners PhD Scholarship recipient.

2018

Master of Business Analytics (First Class Honours)

Melbourne Business School, University of Melbourne

KPMG-MBS Data Challenge: 1st Prize (NLP). MBS Scholarship. Co-President, Business Analytics Club.

2011 – 2014

Bachelor of Computer Science (First Class Honours)

Monash University

Dux of Bachelor of Computer Science (highest overall ranking). Bellamy Awards (top student, 2011 & 2012). International Merit Scholarship.

Awards and honours

Service & community

Editorial leadership, peer review, grant assessment, and sector engagement.

Cancer Data Science Journal Club

Founder and host since 2023. Monthly forum bringing together 10–15 researchers across the ProCan initiative (Cancer Data Science, Software Engineering, and Oncology teams) for critical discussion of recent work in cancer data science, machine learning, and multi-omics analysis.

Manuscript review

Reviewer for high-impact international journals including Nature Communications, Genome Biology, and Briefings in Bioinformatics, among others — approximately five manuscripts per year since 2023.

International funding bodies

Invited external expert reviewer for grant applications to the Innovation and Technology Commission (Hong Kong, 2025) and the Dutch Research Council (NWO, Netherlands, 2025).

AAMRI working groups

Participant in working groups for the Association of Australian Medical Research Institutes — extending service from institute and journal-based contributions into national sector engagement.

Technical skills

Machine learning & AI

  • Deep neural networks
  • Transformers
  • Variational autoencoders
  • Generative models
  • Federated learning
  • Multi-view integration

Bioinformatics & multi-omics

  • End-to-end proteomic analysis (QC, rollup, DE, pathway, survival)
  • Whole exome / genome sequencing
  • Copy number variation
  • Structural variants
  • Single-cell RNA-seq

Programming

  • Python
  • R
  • PyTorch
  • SQL
  • C++
  • Linux
  • Perl

Partners & affiliations