Xiaoxia Liu PhD
Xiaoxia Liu
PhD
Assistant Professor (HS)
Jacobs School of Medicine & Biomedical Sciences
Specialty/Research Focus
Artificial Intelligence; Biomedical Informatics; Computational Biology
Professional Summary:
Xiaoxia Liu, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, University at Buffalo, which she joined in 2025. Her research develops interpretable machine learning and statistical methods for high-dimensional biomedical data, including single-cell transcriptomics, genetic association studies, biomedical networks, and clinical and scientific text. Before joining UB, she was a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University School of Medicine, working with Zihuai He. She received her PhD from Dalian University of Technology and was a Pre-Doctoral Visiting Fellow in Zhiyong Lu's lab at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), NIH.
Research Expertise:
- Explainable and Interpretable AI: Principled, scalable, and robust methods for model interpretability and feature selection, supporting reliable decision-making in high-dimensional biomedical data.
- Graph and Network-based Learning: Graph representation learning, heterogeneous network embedding, and network analysis for knowledge discovery in large-scale biomedical data.
- Heterogeneous Data Integration: Machine learning methods that integrate omics, clinical, and textual data for biomedical and clinical modeling.
- High-Dimensional Biomedical Data Analysis: Computational methods and statistical inference for omics data, including single-cell transcriptomics and genetic association studies.
- Natural Language Processing: Named entity recognition, relation extraction, and information extraction from scientific and clinical text, with applications to literature mining, EHR analysis, and knowledge graph construction.
Journal Articles:
- Xiaoxia Liu, Jiaqi Gu, Zhaomeng Chen, Benjamin Chu, Linxi Liu, Tim Morrison, Robert R. Butler III, Jacob Edelson, Jinzhou Li, Frank M. Longo, Hua Tang, Iuliana Ionita-Laza, Chiara Sabatti, Emmanuel Candès, Zihuai He. (2026) Uncovering Heterogeneous Effects via Localized Feature Selection. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (Sep), 123(38): e2527033123. doi:10.1073/pnas.2527033123
- Xinran Qi, Michael E. Belloy, Jiaqi Gu, Xiaoxia Liu, Hua Tang, Zihuai He. (2026) Robust Inference With GhostKnockoffs in Genome-Wide Association Studies With Sample Relatedness. Genetic Epidemiology (Aug), 50: e70051. doi:10.1002/gepi.70051
Service Activities:
- Contributed to departmental postdoctoral recruitment by reviewing candidate applications, conducting interviews, and providing recommendations to support high-quality hiring decisions.; Faculty Member for Postdoctoral Recruitment and Interviews (2025)
- Supported departmental student programs and academic events, including BRIGHT R25 and capstone-related activities.; Faculty Participant (2025)
- Participated in M.S. student orientation and onboarding activities.; Faculty Participant (2025)
- Participated in departmental leadership meetings with the University President, Provost, and Dean to discuss academic and institutional affairs.; Faculty Participant (2025)
- Served as an external reviewer for CTSI/CEREC pilot grant proposals, providing expert scientific evaluations.; External Grant Reviewer (2025)
- Served as a faculty interviewer for PPBS graduate admissions, conducting applicant interviews and completing evaluation rubrics.; Faculty Interviewer (2025)
- Served as a peer reviewer for international journals in health informatics, biomedical informatics, and bioinformatics, including Network Modeling Analysis in Health Informatics and Bioinformatics, providing rigorous and timely manuscript evaluations.; Journal Reviewer (2025)