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INFORMATION FOR

Rong Fan, PhD

Harold Hodgkinson Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Professor of Pathology
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Education

PhD
University of California, Berkeley (2006)


BS
University of Science and Technology of China (1999)


Contact Info

rong.fan@yale.edu
203.432.9905

Biomedical Engineering

55 Prospect St, MEC 213

New Haven, CT 06520

United States

About

Titles

Harold Hodgkinson Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Professor of Pathology

Biography

Dr. Rong Fan is the Harold Hodgkinson Professor of Biomedical Engineering and of Pathology. His research interest has been centered on the development and deployment of single-cell and spatial omics technologies to investigate normal development, aging, and disease. He received a B.S. in Applied Chemistry from University of Science and Technology of China, a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley, and then completed his postdoctoral training at California Institute of Technology, prior to joining the faculty of Department of Biomedical Engineering at Yale University in 2010. He developed a microchip that allows for simultaneous measurement of 42 immune effector proteins in single cells at high throughput, which remains the highest multiplexing to date for a single-cell protein secretion assay. In collaboration with Novartis and Kite Pharma, it was applied to profiling antigen-specific activation states of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-engineered T cells, resulting in the discovery of novel single-cell biomarkers including polyfunctional strength index to characterize the quality of CAR-T infusion products and predict the clinical responses and immune-related adverse effects(irAEs) prior to treatment. This microchip, called IsoCode, and the automation system, called IsoLight, have been commercialized by IsoPlexis, a company co-founded by Dr. Fan. Now, this system has been used by >100 major pharmaceutical companies and cancer centers around the world for monitoring CAR-T or checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapies. Dr. Fan is also a pioneer in developing NGS-based spatial omics sequencing technologies. He conceived the concept of spatial multi-omics and developed the first spatially resolved multi-omics sequencing technology called DBiT-seq (Liu et al., Cell 183, 1665–1681, 2020) which allows for spatial co-profiling of whole transcriptome and hundreds of proteins (spatial-CITE-seq) at cellular level in complex tissues. He further developed a first-of-its-kind technology to enable spatial epigenome sequencing including spatial-ATAC-seq (Deng et al., Nature 609 (7926), 375-383, 2022) and spatial-CUT&Tag (Deng et al., Science 375 (6581), 681-686, 2022). These technologies may unlock a whole new field in spatial biology with applications in a wide range of biological and biomedical research. Dr. Fan co-founded IsoPlexis, Singleron Biotechnologies, and AtlasXomics. He is the recipient of multiple awards including the NCI Howard Temin Career Transition Award, the NSF CAREER Award, and the Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering. He has been elected to American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering (CASE), and the National Academy of Inventors (NAI).

Last Updated on April 15, 2026.

Appointments

Other Departments & Organizations

Education & Training

PhD
University of California, Berkeley (2006)
BS
University of Science and Technology of China (1999)

Research

Overview

BioMEMS; Single-Cell Omics: Spatial Omics; Hematology Oncology; Immunology

Medical Research Interests

Analytical, Diagnostic and Therapeutic Techniques and Equipment; Hematologic Diseases; Immune System Diseases; Leukemia; Lymphoma

Research at a Glance

Yale Co-Authors

Frequent collaborators of Rong Fan's published research.

Publications

2026

See All Publications

Get In Touch

Contacts

Email
Academic Office Number
Mailing Address

Biomedical Engineering

55 Prospect St, MEC 213

New Haven, CT 06520

United States