Juexiao Zhou 周觉晓, Joshua Chou

Ph.D. Candidate @KAUST with Prof. Xin Gao

Incoming Tenure-track Assistant Professor @CUHK-SZ (Healthcare Ethical AI Lab, HEAL 意为“治愈”，延长人类寿命)

Co-founder & Chief AI Scientist @DermAssure.ai

Co-founder & Chief Scientist @BeautyX.ai

Co-founder & CEO @MOSS.ai

Structural and Functional Bioinformatics (SFB) Group

Center of Excellence on Smart Health

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)

Email: juexiao.zhou[AT]kaust.edu.sa, juexiao.zhou[AT]gmail.com

Office: Building 3, Level 4, Sea Side, 4216-WS23, KAUST

CV (last update: 2025.4) | Github | Linkedln | ORCID | Google Scholar

Openings:

Plans	25 Fall	26 Spring	26 Summer	26 Fall
Remote/Onsite Intern	Open	Open	Open	Open
PhD/MPhil students	Open (1)	-	-	Open (2)
Research Assistant	Open (2)	Open (2)	Open (2)	Open (2)

Recent News:

Education

He is a Ph.D. Candidate in Computer Science at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology under the supervision of Prof. Xin Gao from Dec 2021 - Present.

He got the Master of Science degree, M.S. in Computer Science at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology under the supervision of Prof. Xin Gao in Dec 2021.

He got the Bachelor of Science degree, B.S. (Honored) in Bioinformatics at Southern University of Science and Technology under the supervision of Prof. Wei Chen in Jun 2020.

Research Interests

• AI-driven Intelligent Healthcare: I develop cutting-edge AI algorithms, particularly DL and LLMs, to enable disease detection, prognosis, and risk assessment across clinical settings.

• Bioinformatics: I develop intelligent computational frameworks to decode gene regulatory networks, predict protein function and structure, and model complex biological systems. I also develop curiosity-driven AI scientists based on AI agents.

• Ethical and Trustworthy AI in Healthcare: I investigate the ethical and societal implications of AI in medicine, focusing on pressing challenges such as privacy, security, bias, fairness, toxicity and so on.

  

Selected Publications

(# equal contribution, * corresponding author) [Full list]

1. Pre-trained Multimodal Large Language Model Enhances Dermatological Diagnosis using SkinGPT-4. Juexiao Zhou#, Xiaonan He#, Liyuan Sun#, Jiannan Xu, Xiuying Chen, Yuetan Chu, Longxi Zhou, Xingyu Liao, Bin Zhang, Shawn Afvari, Xin Gao* Nature Communications DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-50043-3 Access: online, pdf Press: Arab News, ChicHue, KAUST Discovery, 转化医学网




2. A unified method to revoke the private data of patients in intelligent healthcare with audit to forget. Juexiao Zhou#, Haoyang Li#, Xingyu Liao, Bin Zhang, Wenjia He, Zhongxiao Li, Longxi Zhou, Xin Gao* Nature Communications DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-41703-x Access: online, pdf Press: KAUST Discovery, Enerzine




3. PPML-Omics: A privacy-preserving federated machine learning method protects patients’ privacy in omic data. Juexiao Zhou#, Siyuan Chen#, Yulian Wu#, Haoyang Li, Bin Zhang, Longxi Zhou, Yan Hu, Zihang Xiang, Zhongxiao Li, Ningning Chen, Wenkai Han, Di Wang and Xin Gao*. Science Advances DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adh8601 Access: online, pdf Press: Inside Precision Medicine, Today Headline, Tech Xplore, ScienMag, Bioengineer.org, Newswise, EurekAlert, Biocompare, nabd.ws




4. An AI Agent for Fully Automated Multi-omic Analyses. Juexiao Zhou#, Bin Zhang#, Guowei Li, Xiuying Chen, Haoyang Li, Xiaopeng Xu, Siyuan Chen, Liwei Liu, Xin Gao* Advanced Science DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/advs.202407094 Access: online, pdf Press: CBIRT news, Medium




5. Patient privacy in AI-driven omics methods. Juexiao Zhou, Chao Huang, Xin Gao Trends in Genetics DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tig.2024.03.004 Access: online, pdf




6. Annotating TSSs in Multiple Cell Types Based on DNA Sequences and RNA-seq Data via DeeReCT-TSS. Juexiao Zhou#, Bin Zhang#, Haoyang Li, Longxi Zhou, Zhongxiao Li, Yongkang Long, Wenkai Han, Mengran Wang, Huanhuan Cui, Wei Chen, Xin Gao*. Genomics, Proteomics & Bioinformatics DOI: 10.1016/j.gpb.2022.11.010 Access: online, pdf




7. Personalized and privacy-preserving federated heterogeneous medical image analysis with PPPML-HMI. Juexiao Zhou#, Longxi Zhou#, Di Wang, Xiaopeng Xu, Haoyang Li, Yuetan Chu, Wenkai Han, Xin Gao* Computers in Biology and Medicine DOI: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2023.107861 Access: online, pdf



8. A comprehensive benchmarking with practical guidelines for cellular deconvolution of spatial transcriptomics.
   Haoyang Li#, Juexiao Zhou#, Zhongxiao Li, Siyuan Chen, Xingyu Liao, Bin Zhang, Ruochi Zhang, Yu Wang, Shiwei Sun, Xin Gao*
   Nature Communications
   DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-37168-7
   Access: online, pdf
   Press: BioMed, CBIRT news, KAUST news
   Chosen as Editors’ Highlights in Nature Communications


9. An Interpretable Deep Learning Workflow for Discovering Sub-Visual Abnormalities in CT Scans of COVID-19 Inpatients and Survivors.
   Longxi Zhou#, Xianglin Meng#, Yuxin Huang#, Kai Kang#, Juexiao Zhou, Yuetan Chu, Haoyang Li, Dexuan Xie, Jiannan Zhang, Weizhen Yang, Na Bai, Yi Zhao, Mingyan Zhao, Guohua Wang, Lawrence Carin, Xigang Xiao, Kaijiang Yu, Zhaowen Qiu, Xin Gao*.
   Nature Machine Intelligence
   DOI: 10.1038/s42256-022-00483-7
   Access: online, pdf


10. Evaluating and mitigating bias in AI-based medical text generation.
    Xiuying Chen, Tairan Wang, Juexiao Zhou, Zirui Song, Xin Gao, Xiangliang Zhang
    Nature Computational Science
    DOI: 10.1038/s43588-025-00789-7
    Access: online, pdf

Short Bio

English Bio

Juexiao Zhou is a PhD candidate at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia, under the supervision of Professor Xin Gao. He is also the co-founder and Chief AI Scientist at DermAssure.ai. His research lies at the intersection of computer science and biomedicine, focusing on intelligent healthcare and bioinformatics. His work primarily involves AI for Healthcare (AI4H), where he develops advanced AI algorithms for tasks such as disease detection and risk assessment in the healthcare sector, including large language models (LLMs). He also works on developing new methods in bioinformatics, such as gene regulatory networks, functional and structural prediction, and systems biology. Additionally, he is concerned with privacy and security issues in deep learning and Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) within the medical field. He has published over 30 academic papers in prestigious journals and conferences, including Science Advances, Nature Machine Intelligence, Nature Communications, Trends in Genetics, The Lancet, Genome Research, Bioinformatics, and MICCAI. His research has been widely covered by mainstream media outlets, such as Arab News, Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK), and Inside Precision Medicine. Juexiao is a member of CAAI/APBioNET/GBD and serves as a reviewer for several SCI journals, including Nature, Nature Communications, Medical Image Analysis, Computers in Biology and Medicine, Computational Biology and Chemistry, Computerized Medical Imaging and Graphics, Genome Biology, Genome Research, and IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering. He also reviews for various international conferences, such as NeurIPS, IJCAI-ECAI, ICONIP, MICCAI, and SIGKDD.

中文简介

周觉晓， 沙特阿拉伯阿卜杜拉国王科技大学（King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, KAUST）博士候选人(PhD candidate)师从高欣(Xin Gao)教授，美国公司DermAssure.ai联合创始人兼首席AI科学家。其研究领域为计算机科学与生物医学的交叉学科，包括智慧医疗和生物信息学。研究方向为AI4H，即开发医疗保健领域的疾病检测、风险评估等任务的先进人工智能算法，如大语言模型(LLM)；开发生物信息学中的新方法，包括基因调控网络，功能和结构预测，系统生物学等；以及关注于深度学习和通用人工智能(PAGI)在医学领域中的隐私和安全问题。在Science Advances，Nature Machine Intelligence，Nature Communications，Trends in Genetics，The Lancet，Genome Research，Bioinformatics，MICCAI等领域内重要期刊和会议上发表学术论文30余篇。相关研究成果多次被主流媒体报导，如阿拉伯新闻（Arab News），香港电台(RTHK)，Inside Precision Medicine等。目前分别为CAAI/APBioNET/GBD成员，担任Nature, Nature Communications, Medical Image Analysis, Computers in Biology and Medicine，Computational Biology and Chemistry, Computerized Medical Imaging and Graphics, Genome Biology，Genome Research，IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering等多种SCI期刊审稿人以及NeurIPS，IJCAI-ECAI，ICONIP，MICCAI，SIGKDD等多种国际会议审稿人。

Academia Experience

• Tenure-track Assistant Professor in Computer Science, Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen), Aug 2025 - Present
• Student Ambassador, CEMSE, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Dec 2021 - Apr 2025

Industry Experience

• Co-founder & CEO, MOSS.ai, Sep 2024 - Present

• Co-founder & Chief Scientist, BeautyX.ai, Sep 2024 - Present

• Co-founder & Chief AI Scientist, DermAssure.ai, April 2024 - Present

Teaching Experience

[Full list]

• CS220, Data Analytics - AI Camp for Ministry of Interior, Fall 2024/2025, Saudi Arabia

  • Cooperated with Prof. Xin Gao
  • Position: Teaching Assistant

• CS220, Data Analytics, Fall 2024/2025, KAUST

  • Cooperated with Prof. Xin Gao
  • Position: Teaching Assistant

• CS220, Data Analytics - AI Camp for Ministry of Interior, Fall 2023/2024, Saudi Arabia

  • Cooperated with Prof. Xin Gao

  • Position: Senior Teaching Assistant

• CS220, Data Analytics, Fall 2022/2023, KAUST

  • Cooperated with Prof. Xin Gao
  • Position: Teaching Assistant

• BioE 201/230 Foundations of Bioengineering, Fall 2022/2023, KAUST

  • Cooperated with Prof. Xin Gao
  • Position: Guest Lecturer, Building 9 Room 4225
  • Contents:
    • Lab 1. Genome data analysis, 2022.08.30, colab
      • Python basics
      • D/RNA sequence analysis
      • Biopython
      • BLAST
      • Reference genome
    • Lab 2. Protein sequence analysis, 2022.09.06, colab
      • Protein sequence analysis
      • MSA
      • PDB
      • PyMOL
      • Secondary structure prediction
    • Lab 3. Protein structure and function, 2022.09.13, colab
      • Ab initio with PyRosetta
      • AlphaFold2
      • NucleicNet
      • Docking with Smina
      • Pfam annotation with deep learning

• CS398 Graduate Seminar, Spring 2022, KAUST

  • Cooperated with Prof. Dominik Michels
  • Position: Teaching Assistant

Mentoring

[Full list]

I’m very glad to work and grow together with these excellent students.

Honors & Awards

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology

KAUST, 2021-Present

PhD, Computer Science

GPA: 4.00 / 4.00

• CEMSE Dean’s List Award, 2024
• CEMSE Dean’s List Award, 2023
• KAUST AII’s NeurIPS travel grant, 2022
• CEMSE Dean’s List Award, 2022
• Excellent Research Award, CEMSE, 2021

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology

KAUST, 2020-2021

Master of Science, Computer Science

GPA: 3.95 / 4.00

• Student ambassador, CEMSE, 2021
• Yearly best student award, CEMSE, 2021
• Full scholarship for MS/PhD study, 2020

Southern University of Science and Technology

SUSTech, 2016-2020

Bachelor of Science, Bioinformatics, Biology

GPA: 3.92 / 4.00 (Top 0.1%), Core GPA: 3.94/4.00

• Outstanding graduate of SUSTech, 2020.
• Cum Laude Graduate of the Department of Biology (Top 1/10), 2020.
• The Guinness world record for “the most vows received by a single civilized act activity”, 2019
• Candidate for 2019 National Scholarship, 2019
• Summer social practice excellent experience Award, 2018
• Excellent Student, The First Prize Scholarship, 2018
• Outstanding volunteer for the 12th CBIS Biennial Meeting, Shenzhen, China, 2018
• Candidate for 2018 National Scholarship, 2018
• Outstanding Volunteer of the 3rd Shenzhen International Life Science & Health Industry Summit (2016)
• Excellent Student, The First Prize Scholarship, 2017
• Dean scholarship, The First Prize Scholarship, 2017
• Excellent Student Cadre, 2017
• Outstanding Volunteer of 2017 Shenzhen International Precision Medicine Summit, 2017
• Alma mater practice excellent team, 2017
• National Literary Creation Award, 2016
• Excellent Student, The Second Prize Scholarship, 2016

Memberships

• Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence (CAAI) Member
• The international Asia-Pacific Bioinformatics Network (APBioNET) Member
• Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Collaborator Network Member

Press Coverage

• SkinGPT-4 was covered by:
  • How a Saudi university is using AI to transform the diagnosis and treatment of skin diseases, Arab News
  • How Saudi Arabia’s SkinGPT-4 is Revolutionizing Skin Care?, ChicHue
  • 皮肤诊断“智能”升级：阿卜杜拉国王科技大学团队引入多模态大语言模型, 澎湃新闻
  • AI tool for diagnosing skin disorders, KAUST Discovery
• PPML-Omics protects patients’ privacy in omic data was covered by:
  • Algorithm Proposed to Protect Patient Privacy, Inside Precision Medicine
  • An integrated shuffler optimizes the privacy of personal genomic data used for machine learning, Today Headline
  • An integrated shuffler optimizes the privacy of personal genomic data used for machine learning, Tech Xplore
  • Shuffling the deck for privacy, ScienMag
  • Shuffling the deck for privacy, Bioengineer.org
  • Shuffling the deck for privacy, Newswise
  • Shuffling the deck for privacy, EurekAlert
  • Novel Privacy-Preserving Machine-Learning Method Developed for Genomics Data, Biocompare
  • نهج ثوري يحافظ على خصوصية البيانات الطبية, nabd.ws
  • Revolutionizing Healthcare: Secure Multi-Party Computation and Privacy-Preserving Machine Learning, BNN Breaking
  • An integrated shuffler optimizes the privacy of personal genomic data used for machine learning, Microsoft Start
  • Shuffling The Deck For Privacy, Eurasia Review
• Audit to forget was covered by:
  • Un logiciel pour garantir le droit à l’oubli des patients dans l’IA en milieu de santé, Enerzine
  • Safeguarding the right to be forgotten, KAUST Discovery

Invited Talks

• [2024/11/27] Pre-trained Multimodal Large Language Model Enhances Dermatological Diagnosis using SkinGPT-4.
  • Poster. 1st International Health Conference on Quality and Organization Excellence, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. certificate
• [2024/10/22] Pre-trained Multimodal Large Language Model Enhances Dermatological Diagnosis using SkinGPT-4.
  • Poster. Health Innovation Week 2024, Global Health Exhibition, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. certificate
• [2024/09/04] 子刊论文撰写经验分享.
  • Oral. 青岛中医药科学院医学人工智能研究中心, 中国
• [2024/08/15] AI for Healthcare: Pre-trained Multimodal Large Language Model Enhances Dermatological Diagnosis using SkinGPT-4.
  • Oral. 汕头大学医学院“智能计算赋能医学”, 中国
• [2023/11/22] Introduction to ChatGPT and Application of GPT in Healthcare.
  • Oral. Saudi Olympiad Elite Camp, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia
• [2023/09/20] A Unified Method to Revoke the Private Data of Patients in Intelligent Healthcare with Audit to Forget.
  • Oral. CBRC Seminar, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia
• [2023/06/12] SkinGPT-4: An Interactive Dermatology Diagnostic System with Visual Large Language Model.
  • Oral. Unlocking the Power of “ChatGPT”, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia
• [2023/03/02] Audit to Forget: A Unified Method to Revoke Patients’ Private Data in Intelligent Healthcare.
  • Poster. CBRC session, KAUST Research Open Week, Saudi Arabia
• [2023/02/02] Audit to Forget: A Unified Method to Revoke Patients’ Private Data in Intelligent Healthcare.
  • Oral & Poster. Spotlight, Rising Stars in AI Symposium 2023 at KAUST, Saudi Arabia
• [2022/11/10] Privacy in Bioinformatics and Intelligent Healthcare.
  • Poster. Smart-Health Student Research Symposium, KAUST, Saudi Arabia
• [2022/03/29] PPML-Omics: a Privacy-Preserving federated Machine Learning system protects patients’ privacy from omic data
  • Oral. CBRC Dual Seminar, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia
• [2022/03/09] PPML-Omics: a Privacy-Preserving federated Machine Learning system protects patients’ privacy from omic data
  • Oral. BDAI重点实验室研究生沙龙第19期, 中国人民大学高瓴人工智能学院，中国北京

Academic Services

Reviewer

Journal/Conference	# Paper Reviewed
AI4D3 @ NeurIPS 2023	1
BMC Artificial Intelligence	1
BMC Bioinformatics	2
BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making	1
Computers in Biology and Medicine	21
Computational Biology and Chemistry	3
Computerized Medical Imaging and Graphics	2
Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal	1
Genome Biology	1
Genome Research	2
Heliyon	1
IJCAI-ECAI 2022	1
ICONIP 2020	1
ICMLA 2021	1
International Journal of Intelligent Systems	1
IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering	1
International Journal of Machine Learning and Cybernetics	1
Journal of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology	1
Knowledge and Information Systems	1
Medical Image Analysis	2
MICCAI 2020	1
MICCAI 2024	5
Multimedia Systems	1
Nature	1
Nature Communications	2
npj Precision Oncology	1
SIGKDD 2022	2
Scientific Reports	1

Editor

• Editorial Board Member of BMC Bioinformatics
• Guest Editor Assistant in Biomedical Informatics (Special issue: spatial transcriptomics)

Conference Administrator

• The 21st International Conference on Bioinformatics (InCoB2022), Administrator, certificate