Hi, my name is Yu Zhang. I am an assistant professor of Statistics at the Penn State University, University Park right in the middle of Pennsylvania.

I received my Ph.D. from University of Southern California with Michael S. Waterman, 2000-2004. After graduation, I spent 2 years at Harvard University as a postdoctor with Jun S. Liu. My hometown is Beijing in China, a city that you should visit sometime.

My current research interest is to develop statistical and mathematical algorithms to solve problems arise in molecular biology and public health. The area I've been studying include DNA sequence analysis, evolutionary history reconstruction, and statistical genetics.

Here are some of my publications and related software packages:

Zhang Y, Liu J (2007) Bayesian inference of epistatic interactions in case-control studies. Nat Genet 39:1167-1173.
Software: BEAM   source

Zhang Y, Niu T, Liu J (2006) A coalescence-guided hierarchical Bayesian method for haplotype inference. Am J Hum Genet 79:313-322.
Software: CHB

Valouev A*, Zhang Y*, Schwartz DC, Waterman MS (2006) Refinement of optical map assemblies. Bioinformatics 22:1217-1224.
(* equal contribution).

Zhang Y, Waterman MS (2005) An Eulerian path approach to local multiple alignment for DNA sequences. PNAS 102:1285-1290.
Software: EulerAlign

For more information about my research, please see my CV.