Welcome to Dr. Zhou's lab
Department of Data Science | University of Mississippi Medical Center, Jackson, MS, 39216

Bioinformatics and Biostatistics Research Support


We provide technical and specialized computational service in a broad area of bioinformatics, biostatistics, personalized medicine, and translational science as needed. We welcome investigators collaborate with us for long- and short-term research projects. Our services include on protocol and grant development, data analysis and interpretation, manuscript preparation, and database development for cancer-related research and cardiovascular disease projects.

In details, our support for bioinformatics and biostatistics analysis include:
  • Computational methodology development for quantitative and modeling biological and clinical problems.
  • Data mining support for investigator-initiated therapeutic targets validations, observational studiens, clinical association studies.
  • Proposal development support, sample size determination and power calculation, and statistical test.
  • Bioinformatics and biostatistics consultant and training for graduate students, medical professionals and biomedical investigators, etc.

Read More


High Throughput Next Generation Sequence (NGS) Data Analysis


We provide investigators with high-quality standard, cutting-edge, and customized genomic data analyses, as well as consultation on experimental design and training/education about genomic methods and computational biology. Our data analysis services for high-throughput sequence data include DNA variant calling, mRNA isoform calling, miRNA analysis, methylation sequence and DNA methylation analysis using established pipelines. Our pipelines are implemented and maintained on supercomputer platform from University of Mississippi Supercomputing Research (MCSR) center, which has 1304 CPU cores, 3608 GB of distributed memory, 45 terabytes of network-attached storage (NAS), and 167 TB of distributed disk space. Each CPU is a 64 bit Intel Xeon processor.

In details, our support for NGS data analysis from raw data include:
  • Support for experimental designs and consultant of overall large-scale microarray and NGS datasets
  • Perform data analysis from raw data and customized quality control (QC) for various "omics" data such as Genomics, Proteomics and Metabolomics.
  • Use existing, widely-accepted computational tools for genomic data analysis including tumor profiling for DNA somatic mutations, differential expression analysis, as well as network and systems analysis.
  • Develop novel customized analysis pipelines for advanced solutions on complicated cases study
  • Genome-wide association study (GWAS) for population-based digital variance, gene variance, and regional variance association with complex disease trait

Read More


study-specific databases development support


Our multidisciplinary team has expertise in providing secure web-based database solutions for investigators to organize their lab data in a user-friendly manner. Our database incorporates cutting-edge computer technologies include large volumes data storage, curation, management, integration, harmonization, security, etc. The harmonized database will provide a platform for investigators sharing their data resource and exchanging their research ideas across universities.

We have collected and curated several types of cancer data (e.g. breast, stomach, pancreatic) from the publically available database (e.g. TCGA, ICGC, GEO) through careful literature review. Our platform provides an intelligent way for organizing genotypic and phenotypic cancer datasets so as to strengthen collaborative, inter-professional communication on cancer research.

Read More