Sihai Dave Zhao conducts methodological research focused on developing rigorous statistical techniques for analyzing large-scale data from high-throughput genetics and genomics experiments. His current work centers on procedures for the integrative analysis of multiple omics datasets – across different subjects, phenotypes, modalities, and species – to achieve more powerful and accurate inference and prediction. Zhao has developed procedures for network estimation, variable selection, and predictive modeling using high-dimensional genomic predictors. He is Senior Personnel in the KnowEnG Center at the University of Illinois, an NIH-funded Big Data to Knowledge Center, where he works on methods for learning genetic epistasis networks. Zhao has demonstrated broad collaborative research experience and has worked on genome-wide association studies of pediatric autoimmune disease, eQTL studies of human heart failure, and integrative genomics studies of long noncoding RNAs in cancer.
Zhao is a member of the Gene Networks in Neurodevelopment and Plasticity theme at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology. He received his MA in Statistics and his PhD in Biostatistics fomr Harvard University.