Yize Zhao, PhD

Yize Zhao, PhD, is a tenured Associate Professor of Biostatistics at Yale School of Public Health, with a secondary appointment in Biomedical Informatics & Data Science at Yale School of Medicine. Her research advances statistics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data science by bringing Bayesian inference together with deep learning, graph learning, and multimodal data integration. Her methodological contributions address how to learn from complex, interconnected data while accounting for individual differences, incomplete information, and uncertainty.

Dr. Zhao’s research spans molecular and imaging data, electronic health records, and clinical audio and video. This breadth connects methodological innovation with scientific discovery and clinical prediction across biomedical science, medicine, and public health, with major applications in aging, mental health, psychiatry, and neurodegenerative diseases. She serves as principal investigator on multiple projects supported by the National Institutes of Health and provides analytical leadership for several major center grants and a large national clinical research initiative. Her publication record extends across leading journals in statistics, science, and medicine, as well as major machine learning conferences.

Dr. Zhao has been named a National Academy of Medicine Scholar in Diagnostic Excellence. Her honors also include the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS) Emerging Leader Award and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics’ Thelma and Marvin Zelen Emerging Women Leaders in Data Science Award. She serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of the American Statistical Association and Biometrics, and as a standing member of the NIH Biodata Management and Analysis study section.

Her Yale affiliations include the Institute for Foundations of Data Science, Wu Tsai Institute, Biomedical Imaging Institute, Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, Center for Brain & Mind Health, Center for Analytical Sciences, Computational Biology and Biomedical Informatics program, and Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program.