Zhang’s Lab
Principal Investigator: Rui Zhang. PhD, FACMI, FAMIA, FIAHSI.
Professor and Founding Chief, Division of Computational Health Sciences, Department of Surgery, University of Minnesota
Associate Director, Center for Learning Health System Sciences
Co-chair, AI and Data Science for Healthcare (ADI-H), UMN's Data Science and AI hub
Director, Natural Language Processing/Informatics Extraction Program
Email: ruizhang[AT]umn[dot]edu
Our research lab focuses on the development of novel natural language processing (NLP) methods to analyze biomedical big data, including published biomedical literature, electronic health records (EHRs), patient-generated data from millions of patients. This research include: i) the secondly analysis of EHR data for patient care, ii) pharmacovigilance knowledge discovery through mining biomedical literature and iii) creation of knowledge base through database integration, terminology and ontology
Current projects in the lab include: i) developing NLP methods and applications to extract information from clinical reports; ii) mining biomedical literature to discover novel drug-supplement interactions through genetic pathways; iii) Repurposing existing drugs for COVID-19 treatment through link predictions and literature-based discovery; iv) developing computational methods to predict personalized cancer treatment caused cardiotoxicity in EHRs; v) developing conversational agent for consumers with developed knowledge base.
About Dr. Rui Zhang
Dr. Zhang is Professor and Founding Chief of Division of Computational Health Sciences in the Department of Surgery. He is named as McKnight Presidential Fellow and the Director of NLP/IE research program. He is Associate Director for Health Data Science & AI of the Center for Learning Health Systems Science, co-Chair of AI and Data Science for Healthcare in Data Science and AI Hub. Dr. Zhang is a graduate faculty in Data Science, BICB, ECE, and SAPh graduate programs. His research interests are clinical NLP and LLM, text mining, knowledge graph and discovery, complementary and integrative health informatics, machine learning. His research has been supported by NCCIH, NIA, NCI, NIMDH, NIKDD, ODS, AHRQ and Medtronic. Dr. Zhang serves on multiple NIH study sections and JAMIA Editorial Board, JBI Editorial Board, NPJ Health Systems, and Chair of AMIA NLP Working group. He was elected as Fellow of American College of Medical Informatics (FACMI), International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics (FIAHSI), and FAMIA.
Working with me
We have openings for postdoctoral associates, and research assistant positions for graduate students in data science, electric and computer science and/or health informatics with an empphasis of health AI, LLM, multimodal learning, multi-agent, and user-driven applications. Feel free to send your CV, top 3 publications if any, and cover letter to Dr. Rui Zhang for considerations.
Prospective PhD applications can apply directly through Health Informatics, BICB, ECE programs and mention Prof. Zhang as their potential advisor on their application documents.