About me

I am an assistant professor of biostatistics at the Institute for Informatics, Data Science, & Biostatistics at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. My research integrates causal modeling and machine learning for more reliable real-world evidence generation and building responsible AI algorithms in health care. I am the principal investigator of the CausAI Lab. I received my PhD in Biomedical Informatics from Columbia University, MS in Computational Biology from Harvard University, and BA from Boston University.

Hiring! I am looking for one postdoctoral fellow or senior data analyst. Please email me your CV, cover letter, and 2-3 publications if you are interested in working in my lab. Please see my lab website for more information.

Prospective PhD Students I am looking for 1-2 PhD students starting Fall 2024. Please apply directly to the Biomedical Informatics and Data Science (BIDS) PhD program at Washington University School of Medicine. In your PhD application, please explicitly mention your interest in working with Professor Linying Zhang. Existing BIDS and Computational & Systems Biology (CSB) PhD students interested in rotating through the lab should email me directly.

You can reach me at linyingz [at] wustl [dot] edu or on Twitter.

News

Selected Publications & Preprints

Causal machine earning for reliable real-world evidence generation in healthcare.
Linying Zhang
PhD thesis, Columbia University, 2023.
[URL]

Explaining treatment disparities from a causal perspective with EHRs.
Zhang L, Jiang X, Natarajan K, and Hripcsak G.
AMIA Symposium, 2023.
[Abs]

Causal fairness assessment of treatment allocation with electronic health records.
Zhang L, Richter LR, Wang Y, Ostropolets A, Elhadad N, Blei DM, and Hripcsak G.
JBI (to appear), 2023.
[PDF]

Adjusting for indirectly measured confounding using large-scale propensity score.
Zhang L, Wang Y, Schuemie MJ, Blei DM, and Hripcsak G.
Journal of Biomedical Informatics, 2022.
[PDF]

Evaluating and Improving the Performance and Racial Fairness of Algorithms for GFR Estimation.
Zhang L, Richter LR, Kim T, and Hripcsak G.
IEEE International Conference on Artificial Intelligence x Medicine, Health, and Care (AIMHC), 2024.
[PDF]

The Medical Deconfounder: Assessing Treatment Effects with Electronic Health Records.
Zhang L, Wang Y, Ostropolets A, Mulgrave JJ, Blei DM, and Hripcsak G.
Machine Learning for Healthcare Conference, 2019.
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Data assimilation on mechanistic models of glucose metabolism predicts glycemic states in adolescents following bariatric surgery.
Richter LR, Albert BI, Zhang L, Ostropolets A, Zitsman JL, Fennoy I, Albers D, and Hripcsak G.
Frontiers in Physiology, 2022.
[PDF]

Predicting hospitalization of COVID-19 positive patients using clinician-guided machine learning methods.
Song W, Zhang L, Liu L, Sainlaire M, Karvar M, Kang M, Pullman A, Lipsitz S, Massaro A, Patil N, Jasuja R, and Dykes PC.
Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 2022.
[PDF]

Predicting pressure injury using nursing assessment phenotypes and machine learning methods.
Song W, Kang M, Zhang L, Jung W, Song J, Bates D, and Dykes PC.
Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 2021.
[PDF]

Teaching

Computational Methods. Columbia University. Spring 2020.
Computer Applications in Health Care & Biomedicine. Columbia University. Fall 2019.
Principles of Biostatistics I&II. Harvard T.H.Chan School of Public Health. Summer 2017.