Rate My Professor Charleston Chiang

Charleston Chiang is Associate Professor with tenure in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at the Keck School of Medicine and Associate Professor in the Department of Quantitative and Computational Biology at the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, University of Southern California. He also serves as Associate Director of the Center for Genetic Epidemiology since 2023 and is a member of the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center Cancer Epidemiology Program since 2022. Prior to these roles, he joined USC in 2018 as Assistant Professor in the Center for Genetic Epidemiology. Dr. Chiang earned his B.S. in Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2005, summa cum laude, and his Ph.D. in Genetics from Harvard University in 2011 as a Leder Human Biology and Translational Medicine Program Scholar. He completed postdoctoral training as a Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Population Genetics at UCLA's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from 2015 to 2017 and as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the UCLA Center for Neurobehavioral Genetics, Semel Institute until 2017.

A medical population geneticist, Dr. Chiang investigates how evolutionary forces, including demographic history and natural selection, shape the genetic architecture of complex traits within and between human populations. His research involves large-scale genomic studies characterizing fine-scale population structure, signals of adaptation, and genetic loci for complex traits, with a focus on diverse groups such as Finns, Chinese, Sardinians, Latino Americans, and Native Hawaiians. Key publications include 'A likelihood-based framework for demographic inference from genealogical trees' (Nature Genetics, 2025), 'The accuracy of polygenic score models for BMI and Type II diabetes in the Native Hawaiian population' (Communications Biology, 2025), 'A noncoding regulatory variant in IKZF1 increases acute lymphoblastic leukemia risk in Hispanic/Latino children' (Cell Genomics, 2024), 'Imputation Accuracy Across Global Human Populations' (American Journal of Human Genetics, 2024), and 'Estimating heritability explained by local ancestry and evaluating stratification bias in admixture mapping from summary statistics' (American Journal of Human Genetics, 2023). His contributions are recognized with the Dean’s Early Career Award for Excellence in Mentoring from Keck School of Medicine (2024), ASHG Human Genetics and Genomics Advances Outstanding Early Career Publication Award (2023), ASHG Charles J. Epstein Trainee Award Semifinalist (2017), NIH NRSA Postdoctoral Fellowship (2013-2015), and National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship (2007-2010). Dr. Chiang leads NIH-funded projects, including R01HG012605, R01HG011646, and R35GM142783, advancing genetic analysis in diverse populations.