People

Join our group: I am always looking for highly-motivated and hard-working students and postdocs interested in advancing statistical methodology in causal inference, clinical trial design, mediation and moderation analysis, especially through integrating modern semiparametric, Bayesian, and machine learning techniques to address complex challenges in public health & biomedical science research. If you are a student who is passionate about developing rigorous methods that bridge statistical theory with real-world health applications, and want to be part of a collaborative, interdisciplinary research environment, please send me an email with your CV.

It has been a privilege of mine to work with my former and current team members at Yale. I am committed to the success of my students, postdoctoral associates, trainees, and junior collaborators, and I make every effort to provide the intellectual, methodological, and professional resources needed to support their development. I intentionally maintain a relatively small research group at Yale to foster close mentorship and sustained, high quality interaction with each member. In parallel, I have been actively collaborating with and mentoring students and postdocs outside of Yale through both funded and unfunded mechanisms. Many of these relationships have evolved into close and productive collaborations based on shared research interests. In what follows, I list only my current and former Yale trainees.

Postdoctoral Associates

  • Yuki Ohnishi, PhD
    • Yale-Mayo Clinic CERSI for the 2025-2026 Scholars Award
    • Winner of 2025 JSM Early Career Award, ASA Section on Statistics in Epidemiology
  • Xi Fang, PhD
    • Finalist of 2026 Society of Clinical Trials Thomas C. Chalmers Student Scholarship
    • Yale-Mayo Clinic CERSI for the 2024-2025 Scholars Award

Students

  • Jiaqi Tong (3rd year PhD student)
    • Yale-Mayo Clinic CERSI for the 2024-2025 Scholars Award
  • Ruyi Liu (3rd year PhD student)
    • Yale-Mayo Clinic CERSI for the 2025-2026 Scholars Award
  • Hao Wang (1st year PhD student)
  • Changjun Li (MS student)
  • Jiaqiu Wu (MS student)
  • Qianzhe Sun (MS student)

Alumni

  • Chao Cheng, PhD (former PhD student)
    • Dissertation: New Statistical Methods for Mediation Analysis with Independent and Correlated Data
    • Current Position: Tenure-Track Assistant Professor, Department of Statistics and Data Science, Washington University in St. Louis
  • Mary Ryan Baumann, PhD (former Postdoc)
    • Current Position: Tenure-Track Assistant Professor, Departments of Population Health Sciences, Biostatistics & Medical Informatics, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • Kendra Davis-Plourde, PhD (former Postdoc)
    • Current Position: Investigator-Track Assistant Professor, Department of Biostatistics, Yale School of Public Health
  • Xueqi Wang, PhD (former Postdoc)
    • Offered a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor position in a prestigious biostatistics department; Declined for personal reasons
  • Yukang Zeng (former MS student)
    • Current Position: Post-graduate Associate, Cardiovascular Medicine Analytics Center (CMAC), Yale School of Medicine
  • Scott Zuo (former MS student)
    • Current Position: PhD student in the Health Sciences Integrated Program, Biostatistics Track, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine
  • Chenxi Li (former MS student)
    • Current Position: PhD student in Biostatistics, Department of Biostatistics & Bioinformatics, Duke University
  • Zizhong Tian, PhD (former MS student)
    • Current Position: Statistician, Eli Lilly and Company
  • Zibo Tian (former MS student)
    • Current Position: PhD student in Biostatistics, Department of Biostatistics, University of Florida
  • Yumin Wang (former MS student)
    • Current Position: PhD student in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, University of Southern California
  • Jiachen Chen (former MS student)
    • Current Position: PhD student in Biostatistics, Boston University School of Public Health