Her research interests include public policy, environmental policy and crisis politics. Her current research focuses on why and how public health crises such as food safety scandals, epidemics and environmental incidents lead to legal change in China, and what the nature of such change is.
Before joining Duke Kunshan, she was a visiting scholar at Harvard Law School and a lecturer at Mid Sweden University, where she taught courses on public administration, policy processes, and crisis politics.
Van den Dool has a B.A. in Chinese languages and cultures from Leiden University, the Netherlands; an M.Sc. in environmental science, policy and management from Lund University, Sweden; and a Ph.D. in law from the University of Amsterdam.

Her research interest centers on population aging, social change, and welfare policies within a global context. Her current research examines elder care (long-term care) experiences, practices, and policies in the Global South (China and other developing countries) and the Global North (the United States and other developed countries). Her teaching interests at Duke Kunshan include China in the world, global aging, and elder care related health policies.

Her work has been published in The Gerontologist, Journal of Aging Studies, Journal of Chinese Governance, Aging and Society, Asian Social Science, Foreign Affairs, and other venues. She is the author of Shopping Cultures (VDM Verlag Dr. Muller, 2007), and the editor of Research Handbook on the Sociology of Ageing (Edward Elgar, 2023, co-edited with Andreas Motel-Klingebiel and Liam Foster). She was elected a fellow of Gerontological Society of America in 2017.  She held a column focusing on aging policies and practices at thepaper.cn between 2015 and 2018 and appears frequently on China’s Global Television Network (CGTN) as a commentator.

Luo has a B.A. in journalism from Nanjing University, China, an M.A., and an PhD in sociology from Georgia State University, where she also obtained a graduate certificate in gerontology. Before joining Duke Kunshan, she was professor of sociology at Western Washington University, the U.S.

Dr. Wu’s interdisciplinary research focuses on improving health among older adults in three areas: (1) assessment, epidemiology, and clinical implications of frailty; (2) epidemiology and prevention of sarcopenia; and (3) promoting healthy aging by refining measurement tools and identifying novel biological, social, and environmental markers.

He has published 96 peer-reviewed papers (61 as first or senior author), secured 27 grants, contributed to three book chapters, and led two symposium sessions and 36 oral presentations. He served as an editorial board member for five journals, a guest editor for two special issues, and a reviewer for 45 journals. In 2022, Elsevier listed him in the “World’s Top 2% Scientists” (single-year achievement category). As a site PI of a National Key Research and Development Program, he helped establish a demonstration area to prevent and treat sarcopenia in the eastern region of China and assisted in formulating the guidelines for the diagnosis and intervention of sarcopenia.

Dr. Wu has a B.S. degree in Psychology from Zhejiang University and later obtained an M.S. in Human Development and Family Sciences, an M.P.H. in Biostatistics, and a Ph.D. in Public Health from Oregon State University. Before joining DKU, he was a faculty member at New York Medical College.

Claudia’s scientific agenda is centered around identifying what works to helps us lead healthier and more sustainable lives. Her research program focuses on the effectiveness of behavioral interventions to promote healthy and sustainable living – eg. how to best promote energy savings, reduce food waste, increase cancer screening or blood donation. She translates behavioral science into practice to tackle these critical challenges, and to respond to calls for better informed policies. In order to do so, she uses a variety of methodological tools including (1) lab studies testing small-scale psychologically-driven interventions; (2) large field experiments testing how to scale-up behavioral interventions in natural settings; and (3) evidence-based policy evaluation, based on meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials and quasi-experiments.

Claudia has a BSc degree in Social and Organizational Psychology and a MSc in Economics and Social Policy from the University of Lisbon, Portugal. She also holds a MSc in Decision Sciences and a PhD in Social Policy, both from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). She has served a postdoctoral researcher to ETH-Zurich in Singapore, and New York University in Abu Dhabi.

Daniel E. Weissglass, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Duke Kunshan University and an Associate Professor of the Practice at Duke University. His work focuses on the intersection of philosophy, the cognitive sciences and emerging technologies. He has two major projects: Improving our understanding of cognition and the mind, and developing policies’ ethical outcomes in health, science and technology. His past work includes papers on mental representation, cognitive architecture and reactivity, health ethics, AI ethics and game/media studies. His teaching interests include the philosophy of mind, cognitive/behavioral sciences, artificial intelligence and applied ethics, particularly in global health.

Weissglass has a B.A. in philosophy and a B.Sc. in psychology, along with a minor in Jewish studies, from the College of Charleston, and a Ph.D. in philosophy from City University of New York. He previously served as a graduate teaching fellow at the College of Staten Island and taught additional courses there as well as at Rio Hondo College.

His research interests lie at the intersection of digital media, political communication, technology governance, and computational social science. His work recognizes that the modes of power have significantly shifted in the era of algorithms, big data, and social media. As such, we need to understand how, why and by whom power relations are transformed through new communication technologies, and how the new modalities of power can influence various actors and the operation of technologies. His research contributes to the ongoing debate about the political and social implications of technological change.

His research has received recognition and support from the British Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Volkswagen Foundation, the International Communication Association, the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies, and the Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies. His studies have appeared in peer-reviewed journals including Policy & Internet, Social Media + Society, International Journal of Communication, New Media & Society, Communication Research, and Journal of Communication.

Liang has a B.A. in public administration from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, an M.Sc. in political communication from the University of Glasgow, and a Ph.D. in communication from the University of Michigan. Before entering academia, he was a journalist in Chengdu, China.

His research has three foci: (1) harmful algal blooms (HABs), (2) microbiomics, and (3) molecular systems biology. The HAB research aims to identify the functional genomic repertoire that drive bloom formation, and the interaction between functional repertoire and eutrophic conditions through multi-omics integration. Microbiomics aims to the understand the interactions among different group of microbial taxa in microbiomes of aquatic and soil environments, and the underlies genomic functional mechanisms. His current work centers on cyanobacterial bloom microbiomes and human gut microbiome (for example, gut microbiome transplantation and cancer microbiome). Molecular systems biology focuses on the structural decomposition and metabolic networks and development of integration of multi-omics data; this work will reveal how cellular life operates on a systems scale and provide the essential computational tools for analyzing multi-omics data.

He has authored over 40 research articles, book chapters, and reviews, and has had work published in the journal Briefings in Bioinformatics. One database of the common ecophysiology of cyanobacterial blooms has been developed for use in the water-bloom research community (http://47.92.225.177/CGDatabase).

Cao has a B.Sc. in biochemistry from Yantai University and a Ph.D. in cell and molecular biology from Fordham University. Before joining Duke Kunshan, he was an assistant research professor at Arizona State University and completed training in bioinformatics at Northern Illinois University and computational systems biology at the University of Georgia.

Jianbo Yue’s research focuses on cell signaling related to autophagy, endosomal trafficking, metastasis, anticancer immunity, Ca2+ and reactive oxygen species (ROS). His research group established a high-content drug screening platform, and identified and/or synthesized many potent and specific modulators of autophagy or/and endosomal trafficking. His group also established both cell and animal models to evaluate the ability of these compounds to modulate viral infection, tumor metastasis and anti-cancer immunity. Jianbo founded two Biotech startup companies (6J Biotech and VBT Biotech), focusing on developing novel anti-metastatic or antiviral drugs, respectively.
Yue has been actively participating in undergraduate and graduate teaching. At DKU (2022-), he teaches Experimental Methods in Functional Genomics (BIOL403) and Integrated Biology (BIOL110). At the City University of Hong Kong (2014-2022), he taught Cellular Pathology, Molecular Biology of the Cell, Hematology, and Animal Physiology. At the University of Hong Kong (2008-2014), he taught Physiology & Pathophysiology, and Cell Biology.
Jianbo graduated from Sichuan University with a B.Sc. degree in biochemistry (1987-1991), Peking University with an M.Sc. degree in genetics (1991-1994) and Pennsylvania State University with a Ph.D. degree in pharmacology (1995-2000). After postdoc training at Stanford University (2001-2017), he moved to the University of Hong Kong to start his independent academic career as an assistant professor in the Department of Physiology. He later joined the City University of Hong Kong as an associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences.

Keping Wu is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Duke Kunshan University. Her research focus is the intersection among religion, gender, urbanization, public good, ethnicity, and charisma. She is especially interested in how people cross religious, ethnic, rural-urban and other boundaries. Her teaching interests at Duke Kunshan include ethnography of China, ethnicity and diversity, and urbanization and changing religious landscapes.

She is the editor (with Robert Weller) of “It Happens Among People: Resonances and Extensions of the Work of Fredrik Barth” (Berghahn 2019) and the co-author (with Robert Weller, C. Julia Huang-Lemmon and Lizhu Fan 2019) of “Religion and Charity: The Social Life of Goodness in Chinese Societies” (Cambridge University Press, 2017). She has had papers published in leading academic journals including Current Anthropology, Modern China and Journal of Asian Studies. She has been a member of the American Anthropological Association and Association of Asian Studies since 2006.

Wu has a B.A. from Peking University and a Ph.D. from Boston University. Before joining Duke Kunshan, she taught at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Sun Yat-sen University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Lijing L. Yan, PhD, MPH, is currently a professor at the Duke Global Health Institute, Duke University in the USA and the Head of Non-communicable Chronic Diseases (NCDs) Research at the Global Health Research Center of Duke Kunshan University in China since July 2014. Previously, she was the Deputy Director of the George Institute for Global Health at Peking University Health Science Center and Director of the China International Center for Chronic Disease Prevention, a large network of 5 international academic institutions and 7 Chinese institutions dedicated to combat NCDs in China. She has a bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Peking University, a Master of Public Health degree and a doctoral degree in Demography from the University of California, Berkeley. Her main areas of research are chronic disease prevention and control (hypertension, heart disease, and stroke in particular), healthy aging, and innovation in translational health systems and services research and implementation science. She is the Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator on a number of NHLBI-funded and China-funded research grants. She has published dozens of peer-reviewed scientific papers some of which in leading medical journals such as JAMA, Lancet, Circulation, and BMJ. She also provides advices and consultancy to national and international organizations.

Dr. Linfeng Huang is an Associate Professor of Biology at Duke Kunshan University. He is passionate about pursuing fundamental questions in ribonucleic acid (RNA) biology and believes such knowledge can be exploited to create powerful RNA-based biotechnology and therapeutics. He has made highly significant contributions to the RNA interference (RNAi) field, including the discovery of the subunit structure of RNA polymerase V (2009) and the invention of the prokaryotic small interfering RNA (siRNA) technology, the world’s first cell-based method for siRNA production (2013). Currently, his research team is studying antisense RNA biology, RNAi applications and delivery, and the infection mechanisms of Clostridium difficile and Zika virus. At Duke Kunshan, his teaching interests include microbiology, genetics, cell biology and molecular biology.

His research has been published in mBio, Science Advances, Biotechnology and Bioengineering, BBRC, among others, and was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China; the Science, Technology and the Innovation Commission of Shenzhen; and three major funding schemes – ITF, HMRF and RGC – in Hong Kong. He is also the founder of Xiaomo Biotech at Hong Kong Science Park.

Huang has a B.Sc. from the College of Biological Sciences, China Agricultural University, Beijing, and a Ph.D. from the University of East Anglia, U.K. Between 2009 and 2014, he completed his postdoctoral training with Judy Lieberman at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Before joining Duke Kunshan, he was an associate professor at the Department of Biomedical Sciences, City University of Hong Kong.

Lab Website: http://www.pro-sirna.com/lab/

Laying at the intersection of society, culture and health, Marius Wamsiedel’s studies have examined access to emergency care, the moral evaluation of patients and the economy of favors in the healthcare system. His teaching at Duke Kunshan focuses on global health, ethics in global health and qualitative research methods.
Wamsiedel has published his works in Social Science & Medicine, Sociology of Health & Illness, BMC Public Health, and Time & Society. He is now working on his first monograph, which examines the moral evaluation of emergency room patients.
Wamsiedel has a B.A. in sociology (magna cum laude) from the University of Arizona, an M.A. in sociology from the University of Bucharest and a Ph.D. from the University of Hong Kong. Before joining Duke Kunshan, he was a lecturer at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University.

Dr. Chen is an Assistant Professor of Health Policy at Duke Kunshan University. Her research aims to promote holistic wellbeing and prevent chronic diseases, especially among underrepresented and underserved populations. She is particularly interested in using mixed methods and GIS mapping and modeling to investigate the root causes of chronic diseases, develop and evaluate health programs and policies. At Duke Kunshan, her teaching interests include global health, global disease control programs and policies, and social determinants of health.

She is a public health specialist with rich work experience in a wide range of public health context including as a registered nurse at Peking Union Medical College Hospital, as a health educator II for the South Carolina state health department, and as researcher/program evaluator/consultant for local and statewide health programs in the U.S.

Her research has been published in top academic journals including American Journal of Health Promotion, Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, the European Journal of Obesity, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Journal of Public Health Nutrition, American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, and Chinese Journal of Modern Nursing.

She is also a certified Master Certified Health Education Specialist and an active member of the American Public Health Association, the Obesity Society, Society of Public Health Education, and National Association of Chronic Disease Directors. She also serves as peer reviewer for health journals.

Chen has a B.S. in Nursing from Peking Union Medical College, Tsinghua University; an M.P.H. in health promotion, education and behavior from the University of South Carolina; and a Ph.D. in health promotion/education at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. Before joining Duke Kunshan, she was an assistant professor in the Department of Public Health at California State University, Los Angeles.

Ming Gu is an applied microeconomist and Assistant Professor of Applied Economics. Her primary research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of applied microeconomics, health and labor economics. Her research centers on explaining socioeconomic disparities, understanding preference formation, identifying optimal economic behaviors for individuals and society, and understanding how policy can help achieve these ends.

After working as a research specialist at Princeton University, Industrial Relations Section, she started a Ph.D. program at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), in 2011. She also interned at the U.N. Department of Economics and Social Affairs.

Gu has a B.A. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in economics from UCLA.

Shan Wang is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Duke Kunshan University. Her research interests lie primarily in the area of cognitive psychology and extend across a range of subjects related to perception and action, individual differences and life span development. More specifically, her research work focuses on visual perception, pain and attention, and age-related changes in motor cognition. Recently, she has expanded her research to study the movement coordination of children with neuro-developmental disorders.

She has published in a number of leading academic journals and serves as a reviewer for PAIN, European Journal of Pain, Research in Developmental Disabilities, Psychology and Aging. She is also a member of the American Psychological Association, British Psychological Society, International Association for the Study of Pain and International Society for DCD Research.

Wang has a B.Sc. and a postgraduate diploma in psychology from Tianjin Normal University, China, and Loughborough University, U.K. She has an M.Sc. in psychology from the University of Edinburgh and completed clinical training at the Western General Hospital, Edinburgh, with a focus on cognitive impairment; and has a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Bath, U.K, and completed her work based in the Centre for Pain Research, Bath.
Before joining Duke Kunshan, she was a postdoctoral researcher at Oxford Brookes University, U.K.

Shixin Xu is currently an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Duke Kunshan University. He got my PhD in computational mathematics from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2013. Then he took postdocs in National University of Singapore, University of Notre Dame, University of California Riverside, and Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences.  He joined Duke Kunshan University on August 2019.

His research interests are data-based and model-based method for diseases’ risks assessments,  neurovascular coupling, and complex fluid in biology.

Dr. Truls Østbye is a chronic disease epidemiologist and public health researcher, with a special interest in obesity, diseases of the elderly and global health. His current research in the USA includes studies of: obesity in children and other high risk populations, aging, occupational health, and most recently, risk factors for suicide.

In Singapore and China, his research is focused on family medicine,  chronic disease epidemiology, health of and care giving for elderly Singaporeans and studies of the health work force.

His global health projects include  to emerging infectious diseases and health and illness among vulnerable worker populations in Sri Lanka. And in the Philippines, with UP Diliman/ UP Manila, his work is also focused on the elderly and caregiving, chronic disease epidemiology and health information systems.

He has authored over 600 peer reviewed papers in the medical and public health literature.

Dr. Lin’s research focus is RNA biology, with a particular interest in long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) biology. He has two main research directions: (1) To figure out functions and mechanisms of lncRNAs in physiology and pathology. The lncRNA of current interest is UCA1. (2) To develop RNA-centric methods for identification of lncRNA-binding partners. His teaching interests at Duke Kunshan include RNA biology, molecular biology and experimental methods in functional genomics.

Lin has a B.E. in biological engineering from Kunming University of Science and Technology and a Ph.D. in Microbiology from the Institute Pasteur of Shanghai, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He underwent postdoctoral training in RNA biology and cancer genomics at the University of California, Los Angeles and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Before joining Duke Kunshan University, he was a project scientist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Xiaochen Zhang was trained as an applied microeconomist. His primary research interests are regional and urban economics and various topics in demography (eg. migration, population aging). His current research focuses on a wide range of topics in applied economics, such as policy evaluation and the impacts of population aging on local labor markets. He’s also an affiliated researcher at the Environmental Research Center (ERC), Global Health Research Center (GHRC) and Center for the Study of Contemporary China (CSCC) at DKU. His publications have appeared at Review of Regional Studies, Asian Transport Studies and Sustainability.

Xiaochen Zhang received PhD in 2018 from the Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics at The Ohio State University. He also obtained a Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization in Demography while pursuing my PhD. Prior to that, Xiaochen Zhang received his undergraduate degree in Economics from Shandong University, China in 2010 and an MS in Population, Resource and Environmental Economics from Fudan University, China in 2013.Before joining Duke Kunshan, he had taught a wide range of undergraduate courses, including on principles of economics, microeconomics, and population and development.

Dr. Xinyu Zhang is a Research Assistant Professor of Global Health at Duke Kunshan University (DKU). Her research interest and experience center on vaccine delivery research in China and other low- and middle-income countries, and health policy and health system reform in China (with a focus on payment system reform and health services research). Her teaching interests at Duke Kunshan include health economics, evaluation of health services, and quantitative methods in health services research.

She has a Bachelor of Management degree in Public Service Administration and a Ph.D. in Social Medicine and Health Management from Fudan University, China, where she also served as a post-doctor from 2022 to 2024. She also served as a postdoctoral associate at Duke Global Health Institute, Duke University, US in 2023. She has participated in multiple research projects supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, National Healthcare Security Administration of China, etc.

Dr. Yu Wang is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Duke Kunshan University. Her research focuses on the role of intermarriage and individual achievement as pathways to social mobility in China during a period of rapid economic, social and demographic change. A second line of her research focuses on sexuality and reproductive behavior in the US.Her articles have appeared in journals including Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, American Journal of Public Health, and Contraception.

Wang has a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in sociology from Renmin University of China, and an M.Sc. and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.