Jianli Dong is a Professor and Director of the Molecular Diagnostics Division, Department of Pathology, The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. She received an MD from Southern Medical University in 1985 and completed residency at Beijing Institute of Infectious Diseases in 1987. She also obtained an MSc in Molecular Biology in 1992 and a PhD in Genetics from the University of Toronto in 1998. She served as a Research Fellow in Human Genetics at Yale University School of Medicine and as a Clinical Fellow in Clinical Molecular Genetics at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in 2001. She is a fellow of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) and a member of the Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP). She is most interested in research, development, and validation studies of laboratory genetics and genomics assays to improve the diagnosis and management of human diseases. She is also interested in BRAF-MEK-ERK and p16-CDK4/6-RB pathways in cancer biology and as therapeutic targets in melanoma and other cancers.