The University of Kentucky's College of Public Health (CPH) welcomes a new faculty member, Dr. Douglas Zhang, to the department of Biostatistics, effective December of 2021.
His recruitment further demonstrates public health’s commitment to promoting biostatisticians as team scientists. Dr. Zhang adds expertise in diabetes research and robotic process automation, along with extensive academic, research, service, and professional experience in industry.
"We are excited to have Dr. Zhang join the UK College of Public Health," says Dr. Donna Arnett, Dean of the UK College of Public Health. "We believe biostatisticians are essential members of the research teams at UK. Dr. Zhang helps us build our capacity in methodological expertise, mentorship and training in bioinformatics, biostatistics, and diabetes research."
Since 2019, Dr. Zhang was recruited to join CPH but his arrival was delayed to the pandemic's travel restrictions. In the interim, Dr. Zhang partnered with faculty at UK to spur several valuable research initiatives.
"We have been working with Douglas for the last several months, before he formally joined us here on campus, and his expertise in bioinformatics and integration of large datasets has taken our research to a new level," says Dr. Charlotte Peterson, Joseph Hamburg Endowed Professor and Director of the Center for Muscle Biology at the University of Kentucky's College of Health Sciences. "We currently have two manuscripts nearing submission as a direct result of our collaboration."
"Our collaborative work with Dr. Zhang's interests in diabetes and metabolic diseases has allowed us to finalize critical predictions on inflammation in diabetes, which will change the way we think about the disease in the short term," says Dr. Barbara Nikolajczyk, Associate Director for Translational Research in Diabetes, Barnstable Brown Diabetes Center, and Professor of Pharmacology and Nutritional Sciences at the University of Kentucky. "We are thrilled he’s on campus now, which will make it easier to discuss projects and grants and develop new analytical methods."
Dr. Zhang also brings valuable industrial experiences, including 14 years at Merck, a leading global biopharmaceutical company. Some of his professional roles included Senior Principal Scientist, Director of Biostatistics and Research Design Sciences (BARDS), and Head of Early Development Statistics. At Merck, Dr. Zhang led development and data analysis for continuous glucose monitoring experiments for diabetes, for high-throughput screening experiments, and for RNA- sequencing experiments along with building and maintaining their biostatistics team.
"We have been eagerly waiting for Dr. Zhang to join our department and college," says Dr. Heather Bush, Professor and Chair of the Biostatistics department. "Dr. Zhang plans to introduce Artificial Intelligence (AI) into our training programs which will take our research to a new level. We believe that combining biostatistics and team science will dramatically elevate our research outcomes."
Dr. Xiaohua Douglas Zhang received his doctorate degree in statistics from Carnegie Mellon University. He has a B.S. in Biology and M.S. in Genetics from Beijing Normal University. He also has an EMBA degree in Management from Guanghua School of Management at Peking University.
Dr. Zhang's research includes digital health, digital medicine, and artificial intelligence; high-throughput genomics and screening, and phenotyping, RNA-seq and whole genome sequencing; medical big data facility management including high performance computing; and wearable medical monitoring studies and analysis.
Some of his recent awards and professional honors include American Statistical Association Fellow (2014 - present), IEEE Senior Member (2019 - present), Elected Member of International Statistical Institute (2014 - present), award recipient of Incentive Scheme for Outstanding Academic Staff in Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Macau (2020).
Dr. Zhang's full profile can be found here.
The University of Kentucky College of Public Health is undergoing a review by the Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH) for re-accreditation. Part of this process includes the invitation to provide third-party comments. Anyone, including students, alumni, employers, community partners, etc., is allowed to share relevant information about the college directly with CEPH. If you would like to provide input to CEPH to inform their review, send your comments to submissions@ceph.org by May 4th, 2025.
