Joshua Chiou
Director, Genomics · Lilly · Translational Proteomics & Statistical Genetics
I am Director, Genomics at Lilly, where I lead translational proteomics for obesity and cardiometabolic drug programs. I use blood protein measurements from large clinical trials to understand how drugs work. Most recently, I presented exploratory proteomic findings from SURMOUNT-5, the head-to-head trial of tirzepatide and semaglutide, at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) 2026 meeting. Previously, I was a Senior Principal Computational Geneticist at Pfizer, where I led cardiovascular and renal target discovery using human genetics and contributed to the UK Biobank Pharma Proteomics Project (UKB-PPP).
I completed my PhD in Biomedical Sciences at UC San Diego, where I used statistical genetics and single-cell epigenomics to study how genetic risk for type 1 and type 2 diabetes acts in the pancreas.
research
Clinical trial proteomics
Measuring thousands of blood proteins in obesity trials to learn how drugs like tirzepatide and semaglutide work, beyond the weight they take off.
Population proteomics and genetics
Linking genetic variation to blood protein levels across the UK Biobank to find and validate new drug targets.
Diabetes genetics and single-cell epigenomics
Identifying which pancreatic cell types and regulatory elements carry genetic risk for type 1 and type 2 diabetes.
selected publications
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Plasma proteomic associations with genetics and health in the UK BiobankMeasured about 3,000 blood proteins in 54,000 UK Biobank participants and mapped more than 14,000 genetic variants that influence their levels, most of them previously unknown.Nature, 2023 -
Interpreting type 1 diabetes risk with genetics and single-cell epigenomicsCombined a genetic study of type 1 diabetes in more than 500,000 samples with single-cell maps of the pancreas and implicated exocrine pancreas cells, not just immune cells, in disease risk.Nature, 2021 -
Integrating genetics with single-cell multiomic measurements across disease states identifies mechanisms of beta cell dysfunction in type 2 diabetesIdentified two beta cell subtypes whose abundance shifts in type 2 diabetes and whose accessible chromatin is enriched for type 2 diabetes risk variants.Nature Genetics, 2023 -
Single-cell chromatin accessibility identifies pancreatic islet cell type- and state-specific regulatory programs of diabetes riskMapped chromatin accessibility in thousands of individual islet cells to show which cell types and cell states carry type 2 diabetes genetic risk.Nature Genetics, 2021
news
| Oct 01, 2026 | Gave an oral presentation at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes annual meeting (EASD 2026) in Milan on differential proteomic responses to tirzepatide versus semaglutide in the SURMOUNT-5 trial. |
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| Sep 28, 2026 | Promoted to Director, Genomics at Lilly. |
| Mar 26, 2026 | Fixed a memory leak in the ha-esunpower Home Assistant integration that crashed when the PVS gateway’s serial number was an IP address. |
| Feb 12, 2026 | Packaged r-mmrm for conda-forge, so the mixed models for repeated measures (MMRM) R package can be installed as a conda dependency in clinical trial pipelines. |
| Oct 20, 2025 | Joined Lilly as Senior Advisor, Genomics, working on translational proteomics for obesity clinical trials. |