Biography

Dr. Shunpu Zhang, professor and chair of the Department of Statistics & Data Science at the University of Central Florida (UCF), has been instrumental in expanding academic programs in data science and analytics. In addition to developing the first Ph.D. program in Big Data Analytics in Florida, he has also established several joint M.S. programs and a collaborative B.S. degree program in data science in partnership with three other departments at UCF.

Dr. Zhang earned his Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Alberta, Canada, and before joining UCF in 2015, he served as an assistant and associate professor of statistics at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and as an associate and full professor of statistics at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

During his time at Nebraska, Dr. Zhang worked as a mathematical statistician at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), where he developed the CI*Rank website under the NCI portal (https://surveillance.cancer.gov/cirank/). This tool provides ranked, age-adjusted cancer incidence and mortality rates by U.S. state, county, and special regions, serving as an essential resource for researchers, policymakers, and the public in understanding community health and evaluating healthcare policies.

Dr. Zhang’s research spans general statistical methodology, Bayesian and empirical Bayesian methods, bioinformatics, large-scale multiple hypothesis testing, financial portfolio optimization, sampling techniques, statistical methods related to influenza virus genotyping, and big data analytics.

• Courses
• Office Hours