PI

Zhi Yu, MB, PhD

Assistant Professor of Medicine

Bio

I am an Investigator at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and an Assistant Professor of Biostatistics at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. I am also an Associate Member at Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and Center for Genomic Medicine at MGH (link to faculty page).

I was a K99 postdoc at the Broad Institute (mentors: Drs. Pradeep Natarajan and Anthony Philippakis). I completed my PhD in Epidemiology and a concurrent Master’s in Biostatistics from 2017 to 2020 at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (alumni spotlight; mentors: Drs. Josef Coresh and Nilanjan Chatterjee). Before these, I received my Master’s from Harvard (mentor: Dr. Edward Giovannucci) and a Bachelor of Medicine from Hong Kong Baptist University.

My research develops and applies computational methods to integrate multi-omics, medical imaging, and EHR data across human and murine studies. I focus on understanding how aging and somatic mutations—including clonal hematopoiesis and mosaicism across tissues—drive cardiovascular and other age-related diseases, while advancing multimodal machine-learning and omics methods for biological discovery and therapeutic target prioritization.

Outside research, things I’m proud of as a medical researcher are: I haven’t caught COVID, I still have natural 20/15 vision, and 50 something LDL-C. Let’s see which one I’ll quietly remove first 😎

Thanks

National Human Genome Research InstituteFondation LeducqNational Heart, Lung, and Blood InstituteSomatic Mosaicism across Human Tissues NetworkAmgenNational Institute on Drug AbuseNHLBI Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine Program

Teaching

Guest Lecture:

- Harvard Medical School (2024)

  • CI 764B - Systems Biology and Omics Analysis II

Awards

  • Trainees: Xinyu Wang – Reviewer's Choice Abstract Award, American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG); Linke Li – Travel Award from the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) Consortium
  • AP: Fellow of the American Heart Association (FAHA; Council on Genomic and Precision Medicine); Early Career Achievement from the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) Consortium
  • Postdoc: 2023 STAT Wunderkind, STAT; Three travel, abstract, or poster awards (six times) from the CHARGE Consortium and ASHG
  • Graduate: Best of ASN Journals 2021 (two papers selected by the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology [JASN] among its publications that year), ASN; Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self–financed Students Abroad, China Scholarship Council; Delta Omega Alpha, Delta Omega Honorary Society; Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Beta Kappa Society; Delta Omega Scholarship, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH); Comstock Training Fund, JHSPH; Ellen B. Gold Fund for Epidemiology, JHSPH
  • Undergrad: Scholastic Award (awarded to student with the highest cumulative GPA in the graduating class), Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU); First Class Honors, HKBU; President Honor Roll (every year), HKBU; Scholarship for Excellent Mainland Student (merit–based full ride scholarship), HKBU; School of Chinese Medicine Scholarship (highest school–level scholarship), HKBU; Hong Kong Association of University Women (HKAUM) Scholarship, HKAUM; C.V. Starr Scholarship Fund, Starr Foundation; Lee Koon Shin Scholarship (twice), HKBU; MI Asia Award, HKBU; Chiu Chow Chamber of Commerce Limited Scholarship, HKBU

Service