Howard Chang

Howard Y. Chang M.D., Ph.D. is Director of the Center for Personal Dynamic Regulomes and the Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Professor of Cancer Genomics at Stanford University. He is also professor of dermatology and of genetics at Stanford University and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Howard earned a Ph.D. in biology from MIT, an M.D. from Harvard Medical School, and completed a dermatology residency and postdoctoral training at Stanford University. Howard is a leader in the study of the noncoding genome in cancer. Howard discovered a new class of genes, termed long noncoding RNAs, that can control gene activity throughout the genome, illuminating a new layer of biological regulation. He has invented new methods for defining the shapes of DNA and RNA genome-wide. The long-term goal of his research is to decipher the regulatory information in the genome to benefit human health.

Howard’s honors include the NAS Award in Molecular Biology, the Outstanding Investigator Award from the National Cancer Institute, and the Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research, among others. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, American Society for Clinical Investigation, and Academia Sinica. His work was honored by the journal Cell as a landmark paper of the last 40 years and by Science as “Insight of the decade.”