Professor
CHEGANÇAS RITO, Tiago Miguel

Dr. Tiago Rito is an incoming Assistant Professor jointly appointed between the School of Biomedical Sciences and the School of Biomedical Engineering at The University of Hong Kong (HKU).

Tiago was born and raised in Portugal. After earning his D.Phil in Statistics and Systems Biology from the University of Oxford, he developed computational tools to map chromatin dynamics during cell differentiation with Prof. Ana Pombo at the Berlin Institute for Medical Systems Biology (BIMSB, Germany). Transitioning to wet-lab research, he first joined the Brivanlou Lab in New York (USA), followed by the lab of Dr. James Briscoe at the Francis Crick Institute in London (UK), where he focused on human tissue biology and stem cell models of early human development.

His research continues to bridge disciplines to understand how embryos build tissues and organs — and how these insights can be used to engineer in vitro models that reliably reflect human development and disease.