Member Directory for The Center for RNA Genomic Medicine

Yanjun Li is an Assistant Professor (AI Initiative) in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry at the College of Pharmacy, University of Florida. His research interests span the fields of deep learning, drug discovery, and precision medicine, with a particular emphasis on AI-driven drug discovery. Dr. Li’s work aims to develop innovative AI algorithms to tackle foundational life science challenges with broad scientific impacts and to optimize and automate real-world drug discovery and design pipelines.

Dr. Li earned his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Florida and then worked as a Senior Research Scientist at the Institute of Deep Learning, Baidu Research USA in Sunnyvale, California. His passion for real-world drug discovery led him to join Calico Life Sciences, an Alphabet-founded research and development lab for human aging research, as a Machine Learning Scientist. In 2023, Dr. Li started his tenure-track Assistant Professorship in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Florida, where he continues to pursue cutting-edge research in AI-driven drug discovery.

Chenglong Li, Ph.D., obtained his B.Sc. in chemistry and M.Sc. in physical chemistry from Beijing University in 1985 and 1988, respectively. Following college, he worked at the Institute of Biophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He came to the United States and obtained his Ph.D. in biophysics at Cornell University, New York in 2000. He spent five years in San Diego, California, working as a postdoc in structural biology at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research (2000-2002) and as a research associate in computational chemistry at the Scripps Research Institute (TSRI, 2002-2005). Starting August 1, 2005, he moved to Columbus, Ohio as a tenure-track assistant professor in the Division of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy at the College of Pharmacy, the Ohio State University, and rose through the ranks to associate professor with tenure in 2011 and full professor in 2016. In August 2016, he was appointed as the Nicholas Bodor Professor in Drug Discovery and professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Florida. In 2026, he was named chair of the Department of Medicinal Chemistry.

Dr. Puthanveettil graduated from Washington State University where he studied calcium calmodulin dependent protein kinases in the laboratory of Dr. B. W. Poovaiah. He then joined Dr. Eric Kandel’s laboratory at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Columbia University, for his post-doctoral research on learning and memory storage.

Fun Fact: I love to hike and my favorite hike is the double tea house hike near Lake Louise, Canada. Our lab focuses on the role of Repeat Associated Non-ATG (RAN) translation, RNA gain of function and protein gain of function in repeat expansion disorders including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), spinocerebellar ataxia (SCA) types 5 and 8, myotonic dystrophy (DM) types 1 and 2, and Huntington’s disease (HD). Additionally, we continue to search for novel human disease genes. We are using high-throughput sequencing strategies to look for single-gene mutations that cause novel forms of ataxia, ALS, and neuropsychiatric diseases. Our scientific breakthroughs over the years have depended on partnerships with talented colleagues and students and with members of the community who participated in our research studies. Although much work remains, scientific advances have dramatically increased opportunities for drug development and clinical trials. Our goal is to perform cutting-edge research that will lead to improvements in diagnosis and treatments for neurological and neuromuscular disease.

Rolf Renne, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, and has studiesd different aspects of Kaposi’s sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) since 1995. His current focus is on epigenetic regulation of viral latency and the role of long and small non-coding RNAs in viral biology. His laboratory is using genomics, genetics, and ribonomics approaches to study how viral-encoded genes and microRNAs contribute to KSHV biology and tumorigenesis.

Dr. Renne received his Master’s (1989) and Ph.D. (1993) degrees from the Albert-Ludwigs University of Freiburg, Germany. He performed most of his Ph.D. thesis work at the University of California Davis with Dr. Paul Luciw in the field of Retrovirology. Next, he joined the laboratory of Dr. Don Ganem, UCSF, where he contributed to early work on establishing tissue culture models for KSHV. In 1999, he joined the faculty at Case Western Reserve University, where he focused on molecular aspects such as DNA binding and DNA replication of the KSHV latency-associated nuclear antigen (LANA) and the establishment of the only available KS xenograft model. In 2004, he moved to the University of Florida, where his laboratory was one of four to identify KSHV-encoded microRNAs. More recently, Dr. Renne has contributed to studies on HSV-1, EBV, HHV-6, MHV-68, and poxviruses. Dr. Renne has been continuously funded by multiple NCI grants since 2004, and in 2017, was awarded a multi-investigator NCI Program project together with Drs. Scott Tibbetts (UF), and Erik Flemington (Tulane University). This P01 Project was successfully renewed in 2022. Dr. Renne is on the editorial board of Journal of Virology, Virology, and serves on multiple NIH special emphasis panels. In 2009, he co-chaired the 11th International Workshop on KSHV and related agents and in 2015 the 40th International Herpesvirus Workshop. The unifying theme of his research projects is to deepen our understanding on how latent gamma-herpesvirus gene products including microRNAs and long noncoding RNAs contribute to viral tumorigenesis. While his focus is on Kaposi’s sarcoma, Primary effusion lymphomas, he also collaborates on EBV-associated cancer, and animal models such as MHV68 and various noninfectious cancers including breast cancer and melanoma. In 2017, he was appointed Associate Director for Basic Science at the UF Health Cancer Institute, and in 2019 was named the Henry E. Innes Professor of Cancer Research. In 2021, he was appointed member of the NCI panel A for Cancer Center reviews.

Elias Sayour, MD, PhD, is the Stop Children’s Cancer/Bonnie R. Freeman Professor for Pediatric Oncology Research in the UF departments of neurosurgery and pediatrics at the University of Florida. He is also a principal investigator of the ribonucleic acid engineering laboratory at the Preston A. Wells, Jr. Center for Brain Tumor Therapy. He received his bachelor’s degree from Fordham University, his medical degree from the University of Buffalo and his doctorate from Duke University.

He completed his residency in pediatrics at Cohen’s Children’s Medical Center in New York and his fellowship at Duke University Medical Center. During his fellowship training, he completed a two-year National Institutes of Health research fellowship in cancer biology and developmental therapeutics. His primary research focus is developing tumor RNA loaded nanocarriers to re-direct host immunity against pediatric brain tumors.

Dr. Sayour is an NIH-funded investigator focused on on developing new nanotech vaccines to reprogram the immune system against cancer cells. He is investigating the use of personalized nanoparticles small enough to deliver essential information to the immune system educating it reject pediatric cancer. Currently his group is investigating the safety and efficacy of this novel vaccine formulation in canines with malignant brain tumors before translation into dedicated human studies.

Dr. Sayour’s work has been nationally recognized by the American Society of Pediatric Hematology-Oncology, National Institutes of Health, and U.S. Department of Defense. He has been the recipient of the Hyundai Hope on Wheels Hope Award, St. Baldrick’s Scholar Award, and the American Brain Tumor Association Discovery Award.

Dr. Sayour is board-certified in general pediatrics and pediatric hematology-oncology.

He has presented his work at several national meetings and is a member of the Children’s Oncology Group, Society of Neuro-Oncology and the American Society of Pediatric Hematology-Oncology.

Ciaran completed his PhD in chemistry from the University of Strathclyde in 2017 under the supervision of Dr Allan Watson studying chemoselective transition-metal catalysis. During this time he also spent time in the labs of Prof. Tom Snaddon at Indiana University working on total synthesis of complex natural products, and with Prof. Glenn Burley on the development of novel click chemistries for nucleoside bioconjugation.

He then moved to Emory University as a postdoctoral researcher working in the laboratory of Professor Nathan Jui developing novel reductive photoredox methodologies. During this time, Ciaran worked on new synthetic methods to access alkylated heterocycles and complex fluorinated scaffolds.

In 2019, Ciaran moved to Princeton University to work with Professors David MacMillan and Tom Muir where he explored new photocatalytic methods for proximity labelling to investigate critical aspects of cancer biology.

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Currently, Ciaran is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Scripps-UF in Jupiter, Florida.

Fun Fact: I love to snow ski and play ice hockey.

Our research group focuses on how RNA processing is controlled during mammalian development and how this regulation is disrupted in neurological and neuromuscular diseases. More than half of the human genome is comprised of repetitive elements, including interspersed and tandem repeats, and more than 60 hereditary diseases are caused by the expansion of short tandem repeats (STRs). We investigate the functions of these genomic elements using a wide array of biochemical (e.g., transcriptomics, proteomics) and genetic (e.g., gene knockout and knockin models) strategies. Additionally, we study how RNA binding proteins (RBPs) interact with various RNA structures using global analysis of RBP binding sites, the functions of nuclear RNA foci (biomolecular condensates) generated by pathogenic STR expansions, and how RNA-based mechanisms promote mammalian tissue regeneration. Finally, we are developing novel cell and mouse models to test therapeutic strategies designed to block the toxicity of repetitive element mutations.

Fun Fact: I love traveling, travel photography, and learning about other cultures through experiences, conversations, and food; being able to be a part of a multi-cultural team is one of my favorite aspects of academic science. Our lab studies gammaherpesviruses – viruses such as Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) and Kaposi’s sarcoma herpesvirus (KSHV, HHV-8), which are associated with multiple types of human malignancies, including lymphomas, carcinomas, and sarcoma. Our research harnesses the power of the closely related murine gammaherpesvirus (MHV68) in vivo system to gain insight into the mechanisms by which viral noncoding RNAs contribute to latency and tumorigenesis, and to define the molecular and pathogenic strategies that these viruses use to evade the immune system and manipulate B cell biology in order to establish lifelong latent infections. The long-term goals of these studies are to better understand the complex interplay between these viruses and the host immune response, and define how alterations in this relationship can result in the development of lymphoproliferative diseases and lymphoma, and elucidate new targets for prevention of gammaherpesvirus malignancies.