Ruli Gao, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics and a member of the Center for Cancer Genomics at Northwestern University-Feinberg School of Medicine.  She obtained her master’s degree in Statistics and PhD in Genetics & Genomics at University of Florida, and then received postdoc training at MD Anderson Cancer Center. She had major contributions in studying tumor evolution and therapeutic resistance models by developing and applying single cell whole genome sequencing technologies and computational tools. Her current research is focusing on developing high throughput single cell long-read sequencing technologies and deep-learning based computational algorithms to better understand the synergies between different molecular clocks of tumor cells and tumor-immune cell adaptations during tumor initiation and progression.