Dr. Zhang joined UT Southwestern as an assistant professor in September, 2007. He currently serves as the director of BERD (Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design) for the UTSW CTSA program. He also serves on the NCI Central Institutional Review Board (Adult CIRB – Early Phase Emphasis). 
Dr. Zhang’s research interest in statistical methodology lies in two main areas: Bayesian hierarchical modeling and clinical trial design. He has published multiple papers on the application of Bayesian hierarchical models to disease mapping, joint modeling of longitudinal and survival outcomes, item-response theory for grant review, functional enrichment analysis to detect important pathways, and multi-level modeling to detect factors that impact cancer screening, etc. Another area of his research interest is design methodology for clinical trials to account for various pragmatic issues such as correlated outcomes (clustered and longitudinal), missing data, small sample sizes, historical control, random variability in cluster size, and cost constraints, etc. He has published multiple high quality papers in this area and in 2015 he co-authored a book titled “Sample Size Calculations on Clustered and Longitudinal Outcomes in Clinical Research” (Chapman & Hall, New York). Dr. Zhang has been successful in securing extramural grants as the PI to support his independent research program, examples include an NIH R03 grant to conduct secondary data analysis on VA HIV registry; an NSF grant to build risk prediction model based on electronic health record data; and a PCORI methodology development grant to address pragmatic design issues in stepped-wedge cluster randomized trials.