My name is Zixuan (Eleanor) Zhang. I am Postdoc at University of Pennsylvania, working with Drs. Brielin Brown, Bogdan Pasaniuc, and Michael Gandal. My research interest focus on developing efficient statistical and computational approaches applied in large-scale GWAS studies and QTL studies to better understand genetic architecture for human diseases and complex traits. Currently I am developing an annotation-free approach to estimate eQTL effect in single-cell data.

Previously, I obtained my PhD in Biostatistics in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences (PPHS) at the University of Southern California (USC). I have been co-mentored by Dr. Nicholas Mancuso and Dr. Steven Gazal. My PhD work developed two scalable approaches:

1. FactorGo: identify shared pleiotropic factors using thousands of GWAS summary stats

2. jaxQTL: perform single cell eQTL mapping using GLM count-based model such as Poisson and Negative Binomial.

Before PhD, I graduated with a Bachelor degree in Genetic & Genomics from University of California, Davis in 2018 and received Master degree in Biostatistics from Columbia Univeristy Mailman School of Public Health in 2020.

Contact

Email: elezzx@upenn.edu