Cuilin Zhang
Adjunct Professor of Nutrition
Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Departments
Department of Nutrition
Related Links
Biography
Dr. Cuilin Zhang is a Chaired Professor on Women's Health at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, and the founding Director of the Global Centre for Asian Women's Health, and the Lead for Population Health Study program of Asian Centre for Reproductive Longevity and Equity. Prof. Zhang holds an Adjunct Professorship at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Before joining NUS, Prof. Zhang was a Senior Investigator with tenure and interim Chief of the Epidemiology Branch, Division of Population Health Research, NICHD, National Institutes of Health (NIH), USA (2007-2021). Prof. Zhang served in the NIH Nutritional Research Task Force Writing Group for developing strategic plan on national nutritional research in the next 10 years (2021-2030) and was the NIH Intramural Subject Matter Expert of multiple themes: Nutrition Across the Lifespan, Foundational Nutrition Science; Approaches, Methods, and Tools for Dietary Intake Assessment.
Prof. Zhang is a clinical epidemiologist whose work unites nutrition. biochemistry, genetics, clinical medicine, and public health, and is at the interface of disease etiology and prevention strategies in the arena of women's and children's health over lifespan and across generations. She is leading a multi-disciplinary research program focusing on the improvement of women’s health and human potentials through diet and lifestyle modification, omics research, and early screening in general. Current primary focuses are on nutrition and lifestyle, metabolic and genetic determinants, and health consequences of obesity, gestational diabetes and type 2 diabetes, and related comorbidities across the lifespan.
Prof. Zhang has initiated and led multiple large cohort studies on nutrition, maternal and child health, diabetes and chronic diseases supported by NIH and National University of Singapore. Along with extensive epidemiological and clinical data as well as related biospecimen collected, these studies were well-designed for investigating a broad range of health and disease outcomes and early life precursors of perinatal, pediatric, and adult diseases based on a multi-omics platform.
Prof. Zhang currently serves in the Oversight Advisory Committee for Go Red for Women’s Health Research Network of the American Heart Association, the International Advisory Committee for Chinese National Birth Cohort, and the External Advisory Board for the Cohort of Mothers/Madres in Texas, USA (COMMIT). Prof. Zhang is an Associate Editor for Diabetes Care and American Journal of Epidemiology and serves in the editorial board for Precision Nutrition.
Education and Training
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M.D. , Preventive Medicine
Beijing Medical University -
M.P.H., Epidemiology
University of Washington -
Ph.D., Epidemiology
University of Washington -
Postdoctoral Fellowship , Genetic & Nutritional Epidemiology
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Awards and Honors
- Annual Visiting Professor Lectureship, Division of Research, Kaiser Permanente Northern California, 2018
- NICHD Director Award for Research and Collaboration, NICHD Fetal Growth Studies, NIH, 2017
- NICHD Director Mentoring Award, NIH , 2016
- Membership elected, American Epidemiology Society (AES), 2015
- Rising Star Award, Society for Pediatric and Perinatal Epidemiologic Research , 2010
- Kelly West Lectureship, Oklahoma Diabetes Center, University of Oklahoma, 2010
- Distinguished Achievements Award, Department of Epidemiology, University of Washington, 2004