Journal of Biometrics & Biostatistics

Xiaohua Douglas Zhang

Xiaohua Douglas Zhang
Director, Biometrics Research
Merck Research Laboratories, USA

Biography

Dr. Xiaohua Douglas Zhang is a Senior Principal Scientist in Merck Research Laboratories. He is a fellow in the American Statistical Association and an elected member of International Statistical Institute. He established/managed a biostatistics team supporting projects in basic research, drug discovery, safety assessment, clinical pharmacology, experimental medicine, modeling and simulation, and clinical biomarkers in China and mentored junior staff and summer interns in USA. He got his Ph.D. in statistics from Carnegie-Mellon University, an MS in Genetics and a BS in Biology from Beijing Normal University. He has taught many statistical courses internally in Merck and multiple courses externally, as a guest lecturer, in top universities including Peking University in China. He is the advisory committee member for graduate students, a core member for establishing a post-doc program for Merck AP Research Center in China and the major advisor for a post-doc in the Peking University – Merck joint program. Dr. Zhang is the single author of a book "Optimal High-Throughput Screening" published by Cambridge University Press in 2011 and has another book “Statistical Omics” as the first editor under contract in Chapman Hall/CRC. He has published numerous first-authored, single-authored or co-authored articles in prestigious peer-reviewed journals. The novel methods developed by Dr. Zhang and his colleagues along with their applications have a profound impact on the HTS research field, especially in RNAi HTS research. Four of his articles (2 single authored, 1 first-authored and 1 second-authored) have been listed among the top 50 most-cited articles in Journal of Biomolecular Screening since 2008. One of his co-authored articles had been highlighted in Nature Medicine’s year-end review on Notable Advances in 2008. Dr. Zhang has been invited to serve as a critical reviewer for papers submitted to Nature, Nature Methods and so on, as an Expert Evaluator for grant proposals for multiple panels in the European Union (EU) 2020 Horizon Program, the EU 7th Framework Programme Health Theme, and as a reviewer for the NIH Study Section. He has reviewed (as a referee) many manuscripts submitted to prestigious journals. He has organized/chaired many sessions in professional meetings and is serving as program committee members for multiple international conferences. He is the vice chairperson of Specialty Committee of Reproductive Medicine of World Federation of Chinese Medicine Societies, and is the chairperson of Biopharmaceutical Section and an executive committee member for Functional Genomics and System Biology Branch, Chinese Society for Cell Biology.

Research Interest

Methodology Development for Analyzing Big Data, Entropy Analysis, Effect Size, Clinical Trials, Linear Model, Bayesian Analysis