Nancy R. Zhang

Nancy R. Zhang is the Ge Li and Ning Zhao Professor of Statistics and Data Science at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and serves as Vice Dean of Wharton Doctoral Programs. She obtained her Ph.D. in Statistics from Stanford University in 2005 and joined Penn with tenure in 2012 after serving as Assistant Professor at Stanford (2006-2012).

• Stanford University – Ph.D. in Statistics (2005)

Her research focuses on statistical genetics and genomics, particularly developing statistical models and computational algorithms for high-throughput biological data. Key contributions include DNA copy number estimation, intra-tumor heterogeneity modeling, and single-cell/spatial genomic data analysis. She has pioneered methods like SAVER, DENDRO, and CODEX2, with recent work on signal recovery in single-cell batch integration (2025) and cross-species kidney disease analysis (2025).

Her publications demonstrate interdisciplinary expertise spanning Statistics, Genomics, Immunology, and Biomedical Informatics. Notable subfields include single-cell transcriptomics, tumor phylogeny reconstruction, and spatial data analysis.

• David Cox Medal (2025)
• Frontiers of Science Award (2025)
• IMS Medallion Lecture (2021)
• Sloan Fellowship (2011)
• New World Silver Medal (2007)

Zhang leads the Zhang Statistical Genomics Lab, mentoring current students like Yuntian Fu and alumni including Kevin Lin (Univ. of Washington), Chi-Yun Wu (Gladstone Institute), and Yuchao Jiang (UNC). Her work is funded by NSF, NIH, and Mark Foundation grants, with affiliations to Penn’s Abramson Cancer Center, Institute of Biomedical Informatics, and Graduate Group in Genomics and Computational Biology.