{"id":1736728,"date":"2026-07-24T06:01:04","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T10:01:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/med.virginia.edu\/faculty\/faculty-listing\/avf2gh\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T06:41:05","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T10:41:05","slug":"avf2gh","status":"publish","type":"faculty-listing","link":"https:\/\/med.virginia.edu\/faculty\/faculty-listing\/avf2gh\/","title":{"rendered":"Chong, Zechen"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Our research develops <em>computational and bioinformatics approaches<\/em> to understand human genome variation and its role in health and disease. We focus on <strong>long-read sequencing, structural variation, genome assembly, and pangenomics<\/strong>, with particular interest in genomic regions and variants that are difficult to characterize using conventional approaches.<\/p>\n<p>We develop computational methods and software for <strong>genome assembly, variant discovery, annotation, and visualization<\/strong>, and apply these approaches to large-scale human genomic datasets. By integrating new sequencing technologies with population and disease genomics, our goal is to improve our understanding of <strong>genome diversity, disease-associated variation, and the genetic basis of human disease<\/strong>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1736818,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"otheraff":[],"phd-degree":[2564,2567],"primary":[2360],"research-discipline":[2492],"research-opportunity":[2545,2541,2547,2548,2542,2553],"training-grant":[],"class_list":["post-1736728","faculty-listing","type-faculty-listing","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","phd-degree-phd-biochemistryandmoleculargenetics","phd-degree-phd-computationalbiology","primary-genome-sciences","research-discipline-bioinformatics-and-genomics","research-opportunity-ro-bioinformaticsandgenomics","research-opportunity-ro-cancerbiology","research-opportunity-ro-computationalbiology","research-opportunity-ro-epigenetics","research-opportunity-ro-genetics","research-opportunity-ro-neuroscience"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Chong, Zechen - Research Faculty Directory<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/med.virginia.edu\/faculty\/faculty-listing\/avf2gh\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Chong, Zechen - Research Faculty Directory\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Our research develops computational and bioinformatics approaches to understand human genome variation and its role in health and disease. 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