William Peidong Gao

Overview

What I work on

What does my research actually study?

I study why the pancreatic beta cells that produce insulin stop working in diabetes. These cells sit in small clusters called islets. Using single-cell data, I look at how individual cells differ from each other and how stress changes their behavior — differences that averaged measurements hide completely.

Why use computers to study diabetes?

Because a modern experiment measures thousands of cells at once, and nobody can read that by hand. I build reproducible computational workflows that turn those large datasets into specific, testable claims about which cells are changing and why, so the result explains the biology instead of only describing it.

What is WillGaoLab?

WillGaoLab is where I learn in public. It collects the notes, videos, and tools I make while working through statistics, reading papers, and building software — published openly on YouTube, Substack, and GitHub so other people can use them too.