Zhe Wang

Zhe Wang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), School of Public Health. He also holds appointments as an Assistant Professor in the UAB Graduate School and an Associate Scientist at the UAB School of Medicine's Center for Clinical and Translational Science (CCTS). His research focuses on genetic epidemiology, particularly leveraging large-scale genomic data to study complex traits like obesity, lipid levels, and cardiometabolic diseases across diverse ancestral populations. He has expertise in developing statistical methods for analyzing rare variants and polygenic risk scores, with applications in clinical implementation and precision medicine.

Education:

• PhD in Epidemiology from The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (2019)
• MSc in Foods/Nutrition from Wageningen University and Research Centre (2014)

Research Interests: Zhe Wang's work combines genomic and epidemiological approaches to dissect the genetic architecture of complex traits. Key areas include ancestry-diverse studies of obesity and body composition, lipid metabolism, cardiometabolic disorders, and the development of predictive tools like polygenic risk scores. His methods-oriented research focuses on rare variant analysis, multi-trait approaches, and causal inference using Mendelian randomization.

Labs/Teams: He is affiliated with the TOPMed Program (NHLBI) and collaborates with the eMERGE Network for genomic medicine translation. His work integrates diverse biobank data (e.g., UK Biobank, All of Us) to enhance understanding of disease mechanisms and improve clinical utility of genomic information.