GQ Zhang

Dr. Zhang, Distinguished Chair in Digital Innovation, Vice President and Chief Data Scientist, Professor of Neurology with joint appointment in Biomedical Informatics and Public Health, and Co-Director of the Texas Institute for Restorative Neurotechnologies at UTHealth Houston, will serve as Principal Investigator on this proposal. He was trained in Computer Science and has built state-of-the-art research informatics programs and national disease-specific data resources. He leads a key unit in the BRAIN Initiative Cell Atlas Network (BICAN)’s Coordinating Unit for Biostatistics, Informatics, and Engagement (CUBIE) program, a component of the NIH BRAIN Initiative. His decade-long experience in successfully directing multiple Clinical Translational Science Award (CTSA)’s Biomedical Informatics Cores and disease-specific research network data coordinating centers has embodied a prospective FAIRness strategy for data coordination that will be immensely helpful for the ReCARDO Research Network. As the contact-PI, he will take responsibilities as identified in RFA-AG-25-001 and assume overall reporting and fiscal responsibility to NIA. He will co-lead the effort on AD-CDE development with MPI Dr. Cui. He will co-lead the AD-CDE extraction from RWD in NIA-funded studies with MPI Dr. Liu. He will co-lead the administrative hub, implementing the five Key Functions to serve the ReCARDO Research Network. He will coordinate with national AD/ADRD domain experts Drs. Arvanitakis and Petersen, and UTHealth Houston MPIs Drs Cui and Liu and the Co-Is, Drs. Xiaojin Li, Rashmie Abeysinghe, Yan Huang, and Shiqiang Tao for creating data ecosystems driven by the proposed CDE-Engine and CDE-Data. He will chair /co-chair the Steering Committee to ensure the overall direction of the project and progress toward the project objectives.