Peipei Ping, Ph.D., FAHA, FISHR

Peipei Ping, Ph.D., is a UC Distinguished Professor of Physiology, Medicine/Cardiology, and Biomedical Informatics in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. She received a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering at Zhejiang University, China in 1985. Mentored by Dr. Paul C. Johnson, Dr. Ping received her Ph.D. in Cardiovascular Physiology at University of Arizona in 1990. Subsequently, she completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in Dr. James E. Faber’s Vascular Biology laboratory at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a second postdoctoral training with Dr. H. Kirk Hammond at UCSD in Molecular Cardiology and translational research. Under the mentorship of Dr. H. Kirk Hammond, she made remarkable contributions in elucidating the expression and signaling of diverse G protein receptor kinases and beta-adrenergic receptors in the normal and injured heart, which resulted in publications in high-impact journals such as J Clin Invest (1995) and Nature Medicine (1996). In 1996, Dr. Ping accepted a position as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Physiology/Division of Cardiology at University of Louisville, where she worked closely with Dr. Roberto Bolli to pioneer a functional proteomics approach for identifying the protein signaling modalities in ischemic/reperfusion injuries and cardioprotection. In 1998, her research group was the first to identify the subproteomes containing PKCε that are responsible for signaling mediation of cardioprotection. Dr. Ping was promoted to Associate Professor in 2000.

In 2002, Dr. Ping was recruited to UCLA. Since then, she has served as the director of the NHLBI Program Project on Myocardial Ischemia Injury and Protection (2004-2011), International Consortium of Proteome Biology in Cardiovascular Medicine (2010-2018), NHLBI Proteomics Center at UCLA (2010-2015), NIH BD2K Center of Excellence for Biomedical Computing at UCLA (2014-2019), NIH BD2K Coordination Center (2015-2019), NHLBI T32 Integrated Data Science Training in Cardiovascular Medicine (2018-Present), and Scalable Analytics Institute (ScAi) at UCLA School of Engineering (2018-Present). Most recently, Dr. Ping and her longtime collaborator Dr. Wei Wang serve as the co-Leads and MPIs of the NIH Common Fund Data Ecosystem (CFDE) Integration and Coordination Center.

Over the past two decades, Dr. Ping has made significant contributions to cardiovascular research, proteomics phenotyping, Big Data science, and AI/ML technology. She characterized the cardioprotective role of PKCε as well as other underlying mechanisms in cardiac injury and protection; pioneered the conceptualization and development of functional proteomics approaches to characterize signaling pathways in the heart; and advanced proteomics/metabolomics technologies, including model systems, quantitative analyses, PTM studies, protein spatial/temporal dynamics, and omics data-driven biomarker discovery. Recently, she has become a critical player in the nationwide initiative of Big Data science and tirelessly promotes Big Data science and AI/ML. Recent projects focus on best practices for trustworthy AI, AI readiness of datasets, deep-learning supported identification and characterization of PTMs on a proteome scale, an omics-based AI approach to elucidate molecular insights underlying pathological phenotypes in atherosclerosis, as well as explaining cardiac death with ECG-based multimodal knowledge distillation using LLM-LM interpretation. To date, Dr. Ping has published 200+ original articles or reviews in peer-reviewed journals, including New Eng J Med, J Clin Invest, and Circulation.

Dr. Ping is strongly committed to supporting and mentoring students. She has been instrumental in creating a wide spectrum of educational programs, including high school internship programs, diversity-focused programs, graduate degree programs, and physician scientist training programs. She is the Inaugural Chair of the Curriculum Committee for Medical Informatics Graduate IDP at UCLA (2019-2025). Over the past 20 years, in addition to large classroom-based lecturing in both the UCLA School of Medicine and School of Engineering, Dr. Ping has mentored 80+ postdoctoral fellows and graduate students. Each is playing an important role in many aspects of our society today; 17 have achieved independent positions in academia and many have successful careers in both public and private sectors. She is currently serving as a PI and the Lead of the Training, Recruitment, and Mentoring Program in the NIH Bridge2AI Center at UCLA (2022-2026). She worked with Dr. Karol Watson to create a physician scientist training program in data science, and under her leadership, the NIH BD2K Center of Excellence at UCLA collaborated with the CTSA Program at UCLA to engage physician investigators in data analytical tool development. Overall, Dr. Ping is committed to cross-disciplinary training that integrates computational biology, bioinformatics, computer science, statistics, and medical informatics in order to equip future investigators with skills required for the digital era of biomedicine.