Public Biography
Dr. Zhang is Professor and Founding Chief of Division of Computational Health Sciences and is named as McKnight Presidential Fellow (a distinguished professorship) at the UMN. He is the Director of Natural Language Processing/Information Extraction research program, co-Chair of AI and Data Science for Healthcare (AID-H) program of the AI Hub, and Associate Director (Health Data Science and AI) of the Center for Learning Health Systems Science. Dr. Zhang’s research is at the forefront of advancing and integrating novel AI and LLM with clinical research and practice, analyzing multi-modal biomedical data, including electronic health records, biomedical literature, and patient-generated data. Dr. Zhang's key informatics contributions include (1) developing novel and generalizable NLP/LLM methods for clinical research, (2) creating foundational informatics resources for clinical research in dietary supplements, and (3) building informatics framework for complementary and integrative medicine for various clinical outcomes. His research has been supported by NCCIH, NIA, NCI, NIDDK, ODS, AHRQ, VA, CDC, NSF, and Industry (Medtronic, CISCO, Amazon, etc). He is elected Fellow of International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics (FIAHSI), American College of Medical Informatics (FACMI), FAMIA and American Institution for Medial and Biological Engineering (FAIMBE). Dr. Zhang serves as the Chair of AMIA NLP WG, member of multiple NIH study sections, and Associate Editor of NPJ Digital Medicine, BMC Medical Informatics& Decision Making, and Editorial Boards on JAMIA and JBI, NPJ Health Systems.
Historic ACMI Biography
Dr. Zhang's informatics contributions include developing generalizable NLP/LLM methods for clinical phenotyping, creating foundational informatics resources and framework for supporting dietary supplements research, reasoning the role of complementary and integrative health approaches for clinical outcomes (chronic pain, depression), and novel methods to discover novel knowledge (ADRD drug repurposing).
Affiliations
Fellows of AMIA (FAMIA)
FAMIA stands for “Fellow of the American Medical Informatics Association” and it recognizes the contributions and professional accomplishments of AMIA members who apply informatics skills and knowledge to their practice – be that in a clinical setting, a public or population health capacity, or as a clinical researcher.
Year Inducted
2022
The American College of Medical Informatics
ACMI is a college of elected Fellows from the U.S. and abroad who have made significant and sustained contributions to the field of medical informatics. It is the central body for a community of scholars and practitioners who are committed to advancing the informatics field.
Year Elected
2024
Natural Language Processing
Working Group
Chair
The mission of the Natural Language Processing is to develop, apply, and promote natural language processing in biomedical science, patient care, public health and biomedical education.
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Learning Health Systems
Working Group
Secretary
The goals of the AMIA LHS-WG are to build a community of LHS practitioners and researchers in AMIA, foster LHS research and applications, and establish connections among the group from different scientific backgrounds including outside of informatics, and countries.
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