Contact Information
137 CAB
Champaign, IL 61820
Biography
Ruoqing Zhu completed his Ph.D. in Biostatistics from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 2013. From 2013 to 2015, he worked as a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Biostatistics at Yale University. He joined the Department of Statistics at UIUC in 2015. Besides this primary appointment, he is an inaugural member of the new "Engineering-Based" Carle Illinois College of Medicine. He was a Faculty Fellow at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and affiliated with the Center for Genomic Diagnostics and the Personalized Nutrition Initiative at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology. He is also an Advisory Board member of Prenosis Inc.
Research Interests
I have a broad interest in developing statistical methodology, theory, and computational algorithms for decision-making problems, particularly in personalized medicine and reinforcement learning. Many existing models are rejected by practitioners due to unrealistic assumptions, unstable performance, lack of interpretability, and challenges posed by small sample sizes, high dimensionality, and complex data structures. Addressing these issues is both a challenging and exciting task in statistical research. My recent work focuses on uncertainty quantification, distributional shift, casual inference, and trustworthiness, aiming to develop more reliable and practical solutions for real-world applications. In addition, I have a strong interest in classical statistical learning and machine learning methods, including random forests, sufficient dimension reduction, and survival analysis, with applications in bioinformatics, infectious diseases, and nutrition studies.
Education
PhD, Biostatistics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2013
MA., Statistics, Bowling Green State University, 2008
B.S., Mathematics, Nanjing University, 2006
B.S., Financial Engineering, Nanjing University, 2005
Courses Taught
At Department of Statistics:
STAT546, STAT542, STAT432, STAT420, STAT400, CS598
At Carle Illinois College of Medicine (co-teaching):
Data Science Project, Foundations: Molecules to Populations
Additional Campus Affiliations
Carle Illinois College of Medicine
- Curriculum Oversight Committee, 2017-2020,
- Course Associate Director, 2017-
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
- Faculty Fellow, 2018-2019 and 2020-2021
Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology
- Steering Committee of Personalized Nutrition Initiative, 2022-
- Center for Genomic Diagnostics
External Links
Recent Publications
Meserve, K., Chapman, C. A., Xu, M., Zhou, H., Robison, H. M., Hilgart, H. R., Arias-Sanchez, P. P., Pathakumari, B., Reddy, M. R., Daniel, K. A., Cox, T. M., Erskine, C. L., Marty, P. K., Vadiyala, M., Karnakoti, S., Van Keulen, V., Theel, E., Peikert, T., Bushell, C., ... Bailey, R. C. (2025). Multiplexed cytokine profiling identifies diagnostic signatures for latent tuberculosis and reactivation risk stratification. PloS one, 20(4 April), Article e0316648. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0316648
Verma, S., Holthaus, T. A., Martell, S., Holscher, H. D., Zhu, R., & Khan, N. A. (Accepted/In press). Predicting Cognitive Outcome Through Nutrition and Health Markers Using Supervised Machine Learning. Journal of Nutrition. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tjnut.2025.05.003
Cao, X., Folta, T. B., Li, H., & Zhu, R. (2024). Analyzing the online word of mouth dynamics: A novel approach. Decision Support Systems, 185, Article 114306. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dss.2024.114306
Maino Vieytes, C. A., Zhu, R., Gany, F., Koester, B. D., & Arthur, A. E. (2024). Dietary patterns among U.S. food insecure cancer survivors and the risk of mortality: NHANES 1999–2018. Cancer Causes and Control, 35(7), 1075-1088. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-024-01868-2
Oltman, C. G., Kim, T. P., Lee, J. W. Y., Lupu, J. D., Zhu, R., & Moussa, I. D. (2024). Prevalence, Management, and Comorbidities of Adults With Atrial Fibrillation in the United States, 2019 to 2023. JACC: Advances, 3(11), Article 101330. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacadv.2024.101330