Aziz is an Assistant Professor of Computational Biology at MBZUAI, leading the Computational Biology and Cancer Regulatory Genomics (CBCRG) Lab in Abu Dhabi. He has a PhD in Bioinformatics from Tsinghua University with Xuegong Zhang followed by a Postdoc at NCMM, University of Oslo with Anthony Mathelier. His research bridges computational biology, genomics, epigenomics, machine learning, and software engineering to understand gene regulation in diseases such as cancer.
Previously, Aziz was a senior research scientist at Stanford Cancer Institute, Stanford University with Christina Curtis where he led a bioinformatics team and developed scalable infrastructure for analyzing large-scale cancer multi-omic datasets. He contributed to major consortiums, including the Human Tumor Atlas Network (HTAN) and the Metastasis Research Network (MetNet). At Stanford University he also served as an Instructor for Stanford Biosciences to develop and teach a course on the art of reproducible science.
He is a strong advocate for open, reproducible, and collaborative science. He has developed widely used bioinformatics tools and resources such as JASPAR, Intervene, dbSUPER, and UniBind, which have become essential resources in gene regulation. He is also a Certified Instructor for The Carpentries, providing hands-on training in software and genomics data science. He was an eLife and ASAPbio Community Ambassador and actively promoted preprints, open-science, and reproducibility.
Education and certifications
- Postdoctoral Fellow, NCMM, University of Oslo, Norway (2019)
- PhD in Bioinformatics, Tsinghua University, China (2016)
- Teaching Certificate, CIRTL, Stanford University, USA (2024)
- PMP Certification, Project Management Institute (2024)
- Certified Carpentries Instructor, The Carpentries (2023)
- Researcher Management and Leadership Training, University of Colorado/Coursera (2024)
- NASA Open Science Certificate, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), (2024)
Teaching courses and workshops
2025
- BIOS 259: The Art of Reproducible Science: A Hands-on Approach, Stanford University
2024
- BIOS 259: The Art of Reproducible Science: A Hands-on Approach, Stanford University
- Unix Shell Workshop, Stanford University, California, USA
- Genomics Data Carpentry, Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA
Search for Aziz Khan's papers on the Publications page