Hang Zhou

Hang Zhou, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and of Biomedical Informatics and Data Science at Yale School of Medicine. His research focuses on identifying novel genetic risks and exploring the biological etiology for alcohol use disorder, substance use disorders, and their comorbidities using large-scale human genetic data.

Dr. Zhou received his PhD from CAS-MPG Partner Institute for Computational Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2015 and his BSc from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2009. He completed postdoctoral training at Yale School of Medicine in 2018 and was promoted to Associate Research Scientist in 2021 before becoming an Assistant Professor.

Dr. Zhou's research spans computational biology and psychiatric genetics with expertise in genomic data analyses. His work primarily investigates alcohol use disorder, substance use disorders, and their relationship with comorbidities including depression, anxiety disorders, and cancer. He utilizes large-scale human genetic data including SNP arrays, whole exome sequencing, and whole genome sequencing, and incorporates machine learning and brain imaging data to investigate underlying mechanisms. His studies have revealed key insights into how alcohol use disorder differs genetically from mere alcohol consumption and has identified specific genetic risk variants associated with comorbid conditions.

Dr. Zhou's publication record demonstrates a strong focus on cross-ancestry genetic studies of substance use disorders, with particular emphasis on alcohol use disorder. His research has established that alcohol use disorder differs genetically from alcohol consumption, and has identified specific genetic risk variants. His work increasingly incorporates multi-omics approaches, examines sex differences in addiction, and explores the relationship between substance use disorders and other health conditions including cancer and pain disorders.

• AWS Cloud Credit for Research program (Yale Center for Research Computing, 2023)
• Annual Pilot Award (Yale Center for the Translational Neuroscience of Alcoholism, 2023)
• Early Investigator Career Enhancement Program (Yale-SCORE Program for Sex Differences in Alcohol Use Disorder, 2023)
• Early Investigator - pilot (Yale-SCORE Program for Sex Differences in Alcohol Use Disorder, 2021)
• R21 grant (NIH National Cancer Institute, 2021)
• Brain Behavior Research Foundation 2018 NARSAD Young Investigator Award

Dr. Zhou leads an active research program focusing on the Million Veteran Program with over 650,000 unique samples, making it the world's largest genomic cohort connected to electronic health records. He collaborates extensively with researchers including Joel Gelernter, Daniel F. Levey, and Renato Polimanti. His current work includes investigating the genetic causality of alcohol intake on cancer risk, genetics of sex differences in alcohol use, and advanced genetic studies incorporating whole exome sequencing and machine learning. He has received multiple grants supporting his research on sex differences in alcohol use disorder and the relationship between alcohol use disorder and cancer.

The Zhou Lab, part of the Department of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine, focuses on identifying genetic risks for alcohol use disorder and substance use disorders. The lab currently includes postdoctoral associate Lu Wang and maintains broad collaborations across multiple institutions. Their research leverages large-scale genomic data, machine learning approaches, and brain imaging to investigate the biological mechanisms underlying addiction and comorbidities. The lab's future research will focus on three main topics related to alcohol: 1) the genetic causality of alcohol intake and problematic alcohol use on cancer risk; 2) genetics of sex differences in alcohol use and problematic alcohol use; 3) advanced genetic study by incorporating whole exome sequencing, whole genome sequencing, functional magnetic resonance imaging data, and machine learning methodologies.