Biography
Xiekui Cui, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Human Genetics at Emory University School of Medicine. He is a member of the Cell and Molecular Biology Research Program at Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University. Before joining Emory, Dr. Cui was an associate specialist in the Institute for Human Genetics at the University of California, San Francisco.
Education
Dr. Cui earned his doctorate in genetics from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. He holds a Master of Science in molecular ecology from the College of Life Science at Lanzhou University in Gansu, China. He completed his postdoctoral training at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
Titles & Roles
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Assistant Professor, Department of Human GeneticsEmory University School of Medicine
Research
Dr. Cui’s long-term research goal is to characterize the noncoding genome, particularly human accelerated regions and transposable elements, to clarify their contributions to human traits and disease susceptibility. With a multidisciplinary background in model organism and human genetics, he integrates epigenomics, single-cell functional genomics and genome editing to uncover the regulatory logic of the “dark” genome. Building on this work, his current research focuses on the mechanistic roles of noncoding DNA regulation in prostate cancer. He is committed to advancing the understanding of noncoding regulatory elements in evolution and disease and to translating these discoveries into meaningful biomedical insights.