I am currently an associate professor in statistics at the University of Toronto. I received my B.S. in Mathematics from Nankai University in 2008, and my Ph.D. in Statistics from North Carolina State University in 2013. I was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill from 2013-2016.

My research aims to develop advanced data science tools and methodologies to handle large, complex, multi-scale real-world data. I work on topics including statistical machine learning, neuroimaging data analysis, statistical genetics and genomics, and causal inference. My research is being supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the University of Toronto’s Data Science Institute, Canadian Statistical Sciences Institute (CANSSI), CANSSI Ontario, and Mitacs. 

I am looking for students/postdocs with strong quantitative and/or computational background to join my research team. 

Ph.D positions available: I am excited to announce several Ph.D. positions available starting Fall 2025. One of these positions is part of the CANSSI Ontario Multidisciplinary Doctoral Program (Mdoc), co-supervised with Zhijing Jin from the Computer Science Department, focusing on research at the intersection of Large Language Models and Causal Inference.

Interested applicants could apply through our department's website. For the general Ph.D. positions, please specify me as one of your preferred supervisors. To apply for the Mdoc position, please indicate your interest in the Mdoc program on the cover sheet and list either Zhijing or myself as your preferred supervisor.