Photo

Language
English
Title and Department
Professor
Department of Medicine, Division of Epidemiology
Director
Vanderbilt Epidemiology Center
Professional bio
Wei Zheng, MD, PhD, MPH, is the Anne Potter Wilson Professor in Medicine, Director of the Division of Epidemiology, and Director of the Vanderbilt Epidemiology Center at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He also serves as the Associate Director for Population Sciences Research at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center.

He has directed more than 40 NIH-funded epidemiologic and genetic studies and has authored or co-authored more than 1,200 research papers. He is the PI for the Shanghai Women’s Health Study and the contact PI for the Southern Community Cohort Study and Southern Environmental Health Study, three large prospective cohort studies, in which more than 160,000 individuals have been recruited for long-term epidemiology and genetic studies of cancer and other chronic diseases. He is an elected member of the American Epidemiology Society and has been named as a Highly Cited Researcher by Thomson Reuters/Clarivate Analytics Web of Science.

Dr. Zheng’s research focuses mainly on nutrition and the molecular and genetic epidemiology of cancer, particularly breast and colorectal cancers. He has developed five and contributed to more than 50 large epidemiologic and genetic consortia. Over the past 25 years, he has been the primary mentor for more than 50 graduate students and postdoc fellows and 20 assistant professors, helping many of them launch their independent research careers. He has served as a senior/associate editor or an editorial board member for more than 10 life science journals.
 
Dr. Zheng received his medical degree from Fudan University Shanghai Medical School and his doctoral degree in epidemiology from Johns Hopkins University.
Education