Yura Song, PhD - Bioinformatician

I am a bioinformatician and postdoctoral researcher at the Laboratory of Stem Cells and Cancer, Université Libre de Bruxelles (Prof. Cédric Blanpain). My current research focuses on understanding how epithelial cell identity, plasticity and tissue organisation are regulated during development, homeostasis, regeneration and tumour initiation. I use integrative computational approaches combining bulk and single-cell transcriptomics, chromatin accessibility profiling, spatial transcriptomics, gene regulatory network inference, cell–cell communication analysis and biostatistics.

During my doctoral training, my work has mainly focused on epithelial plasticity in glandular epithelia and skin, with a particular interest in how mechanical, oncogenic, inflammatory and microenvironmental cues changes cell states and promote cancer initiation. Before joining ULB, I trained in both molecular biology and bioinformatics at the National Cancer Center in South Korea, where I worked on cancer genomics, NGS data quality control and translational sequencing projects. This combined wet-lab and computational background allows me to interpret omics datasets from both technical and biological perspectives.

Beyond research, I have professional experience as a certified Korean–English translator, specialised in medical and biological documents. I have been based in Belgium since March 2018, after previous academic training in South Korea and the United States.