He received his Ph.D in Molecular Biology from Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1998, and worked as a postDoc associate in University of Southern California, and a project scientist in University of California, San Diego before joining Indiana University. Dr. Tang has been working on algorithmic problems in bioinformatics for over 20 years, and worked on genome privacy problems since 2008. He was a recipient of the NSF CAREER award in 2007, and an outstanding junior faculty award from Indiana University in 2009.