Zhijun Yin, Ph.D.

Dr. Zhijun Yin holds a Ph.D. in computer science and an M.S. in biostatistics and is now an Assistant Professor of biomedical informatics and computer science at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Dr. Yin’s research focuses on designing and applying machine learning, natural language processing, and statistical inference to understand and predict health-related outcomes and behaviors using electronic health records and online social media data. Dr. Yin leads the Social Computing for Health and Wellbeing Research (#SPHERE) lab at Vanderbilt and is the PI of an NCI R37 project (R01-equivalent but with two additional years’ support) on predicting anti-cancer medication discontinuation using structured EHRs and patient portal messages. The team at the #SPHERE lab is also actively investigating online social support among patients (e.g., breast cancer patients) or caregivers (e.g., informal Alzheimer’s Disease caregivers) in online social media platforms. Dr. Yin works as a co-investigator in several other NIH-funded research projects, including AIM-AHEAD and Bridge2AI, focusing on prediction models, ethics, bias, and fairness of AI in the healthcare domain. Dr. Yin also works actively as an educator, designing and teaching "Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing for Healthcare" course for undergraduates and graduates in computer science, biomedical informatics, and data science at Vanderbilt University. Dr. Yin now serves as associate editor in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) and JMIR AI, and once served as a guest editor for Frontier in Public Health, SPC member in multiple peer-reviewed conferences in computer science and biomedical informatics. Dr. Yin also actively serves as a reviewer in NIH study sections.