Research Interest

Chao's research interests mainly focus on statistical learning of large-scale biomedical data including clinical, imaging, and genomic data. His research aims to develop novel statistical methods and machine learning (deep learning) algorithms for analyzing data with complex structures, including high dimensional data, functional data, manifold data, and data with heterogeneity. These statistical methods and computational tools can help us understand the disease progression and improve clinical trials for treatment and early prevention. Some projects that he is currently working on are big data integration, manifold data analysis, functional data analysis, imaging heterogeneity, imaging genetics, and deep learning. Chao is also interested in some public datasets including Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative [ADNI], The Osteoarthritis Initiative [OAI], UK Biobank [UKB], Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development [ABCD], and Human Connectome Project [HCP].

News

• 2025-01: Chao's PhD student Yuanyao Tan received the First Place Award in the 2024 ASA Statistics in Imaging Section Student Paper Award competition.

• 2024-12: Chao’s corresponding-author paper "Confounder adjustment in single index function-on-scalar regression model" was published in Electronic Journal of Statistics.

• 2024-12: Chao’s corresponding-author paper "Distribution-on-scalar Single-index Quantile Regression Model for Handling Tumor Heterogeneity" was published in Technometrics.

• 2024-12: Chao's PhD student Yuanyao Tan received the winner of the 2024 Ermine M. Owenby Travel Award. 

• 2024-12: Chao's PhD student Shengxian Ding received the winner of the 2024 Ralph A. Bradley Best Ph.D. Dissertation Award. 

• 2024-11: Chao’s corresponding-author paper "Shape Mediation Analysis in Alzheimer's Disease Studies" was published in Statistics in Medicine.

• 2024-10: Chao’s co-author paper "Efficient Distributed Transfer Learning for Large‐Scale Gaussian Graphic Models" was published in Stat.

• 2024-10: Chao’s co-author pre-print paper "GP-GPT: Large Language Model for Gene-Phenotype Mapping" was published in arXiv.

• 2024-10: Chao's PhD student Anisha Das successfully defended her dissertation research entitled "Advanced Statistical Methods in Imaging Genetics Studies". 

• 2024-08: Chao joined the Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics at the University of Georgia as an assistant professor.

• 2024-06: Chao's PhD student Miyeon Yeon successfully defended her dissertation research entitled "Mediation Analysis in Neuroimaging and Geospatial Studies". 

• 2024-06: Chao's PhD student Harshita Dogra successfully defended her dissertation research entitled "Functional Regression Models for Multi-Site Imaging Data Integration". 

• 2024-05: Chao's PhD student Yuanyao Tan received the winner of the 2024 Yongyuan and Anna Li Presentation Award. 

• 2024-04: Chao gave an invited talk "Exploring Aging through Statistical Shape Analysis in Imaging Studies" at the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of Arizona.

• 2024-03: Chao's PhD student Shengxian Naomi Ding successfully defended her dissertation research entitled "Advanced Functional Regression Models in Biomedical Data Analysis". 

• 2024-03: Chao gave an invited talk "Exploring Aging through Statistical Shape Analysis in Imaging Studies" at the Biostatistics & Bioinformatics Division, Penn State University.

• 2024-03: Chao’s co-author rejoinder paper "Rejoinder on: Shape-based functional data analysis" was published in Test.

• 2024-02: Chao gave an invited talk "Exploring Aging through Statistical Shape Analysis in Imaging Studies" at the Department of Biostatistics, Yale University.

• 2024-01: Chao's PhD student Miyeon Yeon received the Honorable Mention in the 2024 ASA Mental Health Statistics Section Student Paper Award competition.

• 2024-01: Chao received the FSU Summer Research Support (SRS) Award "Identification and Evaluation of Subgroups in Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias Using Longitudinal Multimodal Image Data from Multiple Studies": Role: PI.

• 2024-01: Chao’s equal-contributed first-author paper "Merging or Ensembling: Integrative Analysis in Multiple Neuroimaging  Studies" was published in Biometrics.

• 2024-01: Chao offered a new graduate course STA 5327 Statistical Inference. 

Openings

Chao is looking for one or two highly motivated graduate students for Research Assistant positions. Please contact him through Email. You can also visit his office by appointment.