Douglas Zhang

Professor

Dr. Zhang is a Professor of Biostatistics, a fellow of American Statistical Association Fellow, a Senior Member of IEEE, and an Elected Member of International Statistical Institute. He received his PH.D. in statistics from Carnegie Mellon University, EMBA in Management from Guanghua School of Management at Peking University, M.S. in Genetics and B.S. in Biology from Beijing Normal University.

Zhang’s research is focused on big data analysis and artificial intelligence. Current research in this area includes conducting studies in continuous monitoring of physiological signals (such as blood glucose, respiratory signals, cardiovascular signals) and high-throughput genomics (such as high-throughput screening, RNA-seq, cytokine profiling and metabonomics) to address medical questions in diabetes, neuro-diseases, cancers, respiratory diseases, cardiovascular diseases, and so on.

His critical research also includes the development of novel statistical methodology and software (including R packages) for analyzing biomedical data. These novel methods and their applications highly impact the research fields of using high throughput screening and continuous glucose monitoring. He is the single author of a book "Optimal High-Throughput Screening" published by Cambridge University Press and has published research articles as the primary author in prestigious journals like Bioinformatics, Nucleic Acids Research, Allergy and so on.

Zhang has rich experience in both academics and industry. In the industry, he had 14 years at Merck, which is a leading global biopharmaceutical company for many of the world’s most challenging diseases. His professional roles included Senior Principal Scientist, Director in Biostatistics and Research Decision Sciences and Head of Early Development Statistics – Asian Pacific, Associate Director, and Senior Biometrician. He established and managed a team providing statistical support for a broad range of studies, including basic research, drug discovery, preclinical studies, clinical pharmacology, phase I, phase II, modeling and simulation, experimental medicine, clinical biomarker, and regulatory affairs in Merck.

Dr. Zhang is the founder and chair of the Executive Board of Macau Association for Bioinformatics and has organized many scientific conferences. He has been invited to serve as a critical reviewer for papers submitted to Nature, Nature Methods, Bioinformatics, JASA and so on, as an expert evaluator for grant proposals for multiple panels in USA (such as the NIH study section), Europe and Hong Kong, respectively.