Research Interests
- Statistical and Computational Methodology
Construction of Large Causal Systems; Exploratory Analysis/Visualization of Big Data; Generalized Linear (Mixed) Models; Integrative Analysis of Big Data; Meta-Analysis; Multivariate Extreme Values; High-Dimensional Variable Selection; Supervised Dimension Reduction; Survival Analysis; Transfer Learning.
- Statistical Genetics and Bioinformatics
Causal Inference of Transcriptome-Wide Gene Regulatory Networks; Epistatic Interaction; Genetic Heritability; Gene×Environment Interaction; Genome-Wide/SequencingBased Association Study; Genomic Selection; Identification of Molecular Signatures; Integrative Analysis of Omics Data; Mendelian Randomization; Pan-Cancer Analysis of Variance of Gene Regulatory Networks.
Current Projects/Studies
- developing exploratory tools to visualize and reveal relational structures among massive variables in big data
- developing computational algorithms to infer biological causality between molecular variables and medical/clinical phenotypes
- defining computationally feasible measures to address the explainability issue of AI models
- taking advantage of generative models to enhance statistical analysis of text data
Education
- Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853 Ph.D. in Statistics, 2003
- Peking University, Beijing, China M.Sc. in Probability & Statistics, 1993
- Nankai University, Tianjin, China B.Sc. in Mathematical Statistics, 1990
Honors and Awards
- Purdue University College of Science Outstanding Service Award 2023
- Purdue University Seed for Success Award 2011, 2020
- National Science Foundation CAREER Award 2009
- Purdue University College of Science Interdisciplinary Award 2009
- Cornell University Liu Memorial Award 2003
- First Prize Winner of National PC-Software Competition 1995
Publications
• Zhang D (2022). Coefficients of determination for mixed-effects models. Journal of Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Statistics, 27: 674-689.
• Liu D, Yang Z, Chandler K, Oshodi A, Zhang T, Ma J, Kusumanchi P, Huda N, Heathers L, Perez K, Tyler K, Ross RA, Johnson N, Jiang Y, Zhang, D, Zhang M, and Liangpunsakul S (2022). Serum metabolomic analysis reveals several novel metabolites in
association with excessive alcohol use – an exploratory study. Translational Research,
240: 87-98.
• Cobb J, Cheny C, Shi Y, Maron L, Liuy D, Rutzke M, Greenberg A, Craft E, Sha J, Paul, Akther K, Wang S, Kochian L, Zhang D, Zhang M, and McCouch S (2021). Genetic architecture of root and shoot ionomes in rice Oryza sativa L. Theoretical and Applied Genetics, 134: 2613-2637.
• Hi Y, Peng L, Zhang D, and Zhao Z (2021). Risk analysis via generalized Pareto distributions. Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, DOI: 10.1080/07350015.2021.1874390. (The 9th most downloaded paper among papers published in JBES over the past three
years.)
• Zhang D (2020). Coefficients of determination for generalized linear mixed models. Technical Report 20-01, Department of Statistics, Purdue University.
• Wang X, Ren M, Liu D, Zhang D, Lang Z, Zhang C, Macho AP, Zhang M, and Zhu J-K (2020). Large-scale eQTL identification in Arabidopsis reveals novel candidate regulators of immune responses and other processes. Journal of Integrative Plant Biology,
62: 1469-1484.
• Pungpapong V, Zhang M, and Zhang D (2020). Integrating biological knowledge into case-control analysis via iterated conditional modes/medians algorithm. Journal of Computational Biology, 27: 1171-1179.
• Chen C, Zhang D, Hazbun T, and Zhang M (2019). Inferring gene regulatory networks from a population of yeast segregants. Scientific Reports, 9: 1197.
• Ren M and Zhang D (2018). Differential Analysis of Directed Networks. Proceedings of the 34-th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence, 2018.
• Chen C, Ren M, Zhang M, and Zhang D (2018) Two-stage penalized least squares method for constructing large systems of structural equations. Journal of Machine Learning Research, 19: 1-34.
• Chen C, Nagana Gowda GA, Zhu J, Deng L, Gu H, Chiorean EG, Zaid MA, Harrison M, Zhang D, Zhang M, and Raftery D (2017). Altered metabolite levels and correlations in patients with colorectal cancer and polyps detected using seemingly unrelated regression analysis. Metabolomics, 13: 125. 4 Dabao Zhang
• Zhang D (2017). A Coefficient of determination for generalized linear models. The American Statistician, 71: 310-316.
• Deng X, Shao G, Zhang H-T, Li C, Zhang D, Cheng L, Elzey BD, Pili R, Ratliff TL, Huang J, and Hu C-D (2017). Protein arginine methyltransferase 5 functions as an epigenetic activator of the androgen receptor to promote prostate cancer cell growth. Oncogene, 36: 1223-1231.
