Shanshan Zhao

Dr. Shanshan Zhao is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Principal Investigator at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). Her research focuses on developing statistical methods to understand environmental and social influences on health, particularly in cancer epidemiology and risk prediction. She holds a secondary appointment in the NIEHS Epidemiology Branch and leads a group integrating statistical methodology with population-based studies.

Her work emphasizes disease risk assessment using survival analysis, longitudinal data, and biomarker evaluation. Key research areas include multivariate failure time data, environmental mixture analysis, and epigenetic biomarkers. She has contributed to studies on breast, prostate, and colorectal cancers, emphasizing spatial-temporal modeling and public health applications.

Zhao’s awards include the 2014 ASA David P. Byar Travel Award and recognition for her 2023 NIEHS publication on environmental breast cancer risk factors. Her team develops software tools like mhazard for multivariate survival analysis and STAFT for spatio-temporal modeling.

Her lab collaborates across disciplines to advance environmental health sciences, with a focus on translating statistical innovations into actionable insights for clinicians and policymakers.