Deirdre K. Tobias, ScD
Associate Professor of Medicine
Department of Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts
Dr. Deirdre Tobias is an obesity and nutritional epidemiologist at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston. She received her doctorate and postdoctoral training at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA. Dr. Tobias was appointed the Academic Editor for the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2019. Her research focuses on the role of diet and lifestyle for obesity and its major chronic diseases, including gestational diabetes and type 2 diabetes, and has been published in leading peer-reviewed journals including the New England Journal of Medicine and Journal of the American Medical Association. She contributes to the development and analyses of healthful dietary patterns, metabolomics, and nutrition epidemiologic methods, and is co-Instructor of Nutritional Epidemiology at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.
Edward L. Giovannucci, MD, ScD
Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology
Departments of Nutrition and Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts
Dr. Edward Giovannucci is a Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Giovannucci graduated from Harvard University in 1980, and he received his MD from University of Pittsburgh in 1984. He did his residency in anatomic pathology at the University of Connecticut, and then completed ScD in epidemiology from the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health in 1992. Over the past three decades, Dr. Giovannucci’s work has been based largely on prospective cohort studies, such as the Nurses’ Health Study I & II and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study. His research focuses on how nutritional, lifestyle and genetic factors affect the risk of development and progression of various malignancies, especially those of the large intestine, other gastrointestinal cancers, and prostate cancer. A specific interest has been understanding etiologic mechanisms underlying the relation between diet, physical activity, body weight and composition, and metabolic dysfunction and cancer risk. He currently serves as an American Cancer Society Clinical Researcher Professor. Fourteen former primary pre- or post-doctoral mentees are full Professors and eleven are Assistant/Associate Professors.
Xuehong Zhang, ScD, MBBS
Professor of Medicine, Assistant Dean of Research
Yale School of Nursing, Orange, Connecticut
Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology
Departments of Nutrition and Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts
Dr. Zhang is an epidemiologist with training in clinical medicine and nutrition. Dr. Zhang’s program of research and scholarships has focused on cancer research, liver diseases, health equity, and global health, as well as advancing clinical care quality. He has >20 years of experience in development, design, and implementation as well as statistical analyses of clinical, epidemiological and community-based cohort studies and international consortia. His multidisciplinary and translational research features innovative integration of epidemiology, lifestyle, nutrition, obesity, environmental factors, -omics, and basic science. He serves as a reviewer for NIH/NCI study sections, and the American Cancer Society, and has been invited to present research at numerous national and international events. He is passionate about education and mentoring and has trained >30 early-career researchers and taught at Harvard and other institutions.
Longgang Zhao, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Yale School of Nursing, Orange, Connecticut
Dr. Zhao is currently a postdoctoral research associate at Yale School of Nursing (2024-present). Previously, he conducted postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School (2023-2024). As a cancer epidemiologist, Dr. Zhao has extensive training and experience in epidemiologic study design, molecular and nutritional epidemiology. He has authored approximately 50 peer-reviewed articles in internationally renowned journals, including JAMA, Journal of Hepatology, and the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Dr. Zhao’s primary research focuses on the impact of dietary patterns on liver disease and liver cancer. His current work primarily utilizes large prospective cohort studies and clinical cohorts based on electronic medical records to investigate the effects of lifestyle, nutrition, obesity, and environmental factors on liver disease and gastrointestinal cancer.
Cong Wang, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Division of Preventive Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts
Dr. Cong Wang is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Her research focuses on the molecular epidemiology of cancer, utilizing multi-omics approaches and electronic health records to study cancer risk factors, early detection, and survivorship, particularly in breast and gastrointestinal cancers. Dr. Wang has extensive training in study design, omics data analysis, and clinical informatics, with experience working with clinic- and population-based cohorts. She earned her Ph.D. in Epidemiology from Vanderbilt University before joining BWH.