Puyang Zhao
Postdoctoral Associate · Rice University Houston, TX she/her

I am a Postdoctoral Associate at Rice University, working with Dr. Hanjie Chen. I earned my Ph.D. in Biostatistics from UTHealth Houston (advisors: Dr. James Yang, Dr. Anne Buu, Dr. Theresa Tran), M.Sc. from the University of Melbourne (Dr. Howard Bondell), and B.Sc. from Hong Kong Baptist University (Dr. Jingjing Wu). My work sits at the intersection of biostatistics, machine learning, and clinical applications.

§ News
  • Apr 2026

    Invited to present at CAPE Day 2026 (United Way, April 23) on the Poverty Simulator intervention in health professions education.Talk

  • Apr 2026

    Paper accepted at IEEE EIT 2026: "Comparative Analysis of Shallow and Deep Learning Methods for Diabetes Prediction Using the Pima Indians Dataset".Paper

  • 2026

    Paper published in Biomedical Signal Processing and Control: "Demography-Aware Personalized Federated Learning for Fair, Private, and Efficient Clinical Risk Prediction".Paper

  • 2026

    Paper published in Biomedical Signal Processing and Control: "Pre-attentive Speech Signal Processing with Adaptive Routing for Emotion Recognition".Paper

  • 2026

    Paper presented at the 30th Annual Conference of the International Association: "Promoting Structural Awareness and Empathy: Evaluation of a Poverty Simulation Intervention in Health Professions Education".Paper

  • Feb 2026

    Joined Rice University as a Postdoctoral Associate in Computer Science, working with Dr. Hanjie Chen.New Role

  • Dec 2025

    Awarded Ph.D. in Biostatistics (minor: Health Economics) from UTHealth Houston.Milestone

  • 2025

    Paper accepted at IEEE AIxMHC 2025 (Taiwan): "Weighted Federated Learning with Encryption for Diabetes Classification".Paper

§ Research Interests
Wearable Devices
Physiological signal analysis, heart rate monitoring in relation to nicotine vaping events.
🗣
Speech Emotion Recognition
Capsule networks and fusion models for robust emotion recognition in clinical settings.
📊
Longitudinal & EMA Data
Statistical methods for ecological momentary assessment in behavioral health research.
🩺
Clinical Machine Learning
GAN-based methods, federated learning, and deep learning for diabetes classification.
🌿
Environmental Modeling
dPL-SPARROW framework combining neural networks with watershed models.
🚬
Tobacco & E-cigarette
Vaping behavior patterns and tobacco control in public health research.
§ Education
2026 – Present

Postdoctoral Associate in Computer Science

Rice University, Houston, TX

Advisor: Dr. Hanjie Chen

2025 · Ph.D.

Biostatistics (minor: Health Economics)

UTHealth Houston

Advisors: Dr. James Yang · Dr. Anne Buu · Dr. Theresa Tran

M.Sc.

Mathematics and Statistics

University of Melbourne, Australia

Advisor: Dr. Howard Bondell

B.Sc.

Statistics

Hong Kong Baptist University

Advisor: Dr. Jingjing Wu

§ Publications
2026

Demography-Aware Personalized Federated Learning for Fair, Private, and Efficient Clinical Risk Prediction

Zhao P., Yue Z., Mi N., Zhang H.

Biomedical Signal Processing and Control 114, 109312

Journal
2026

Pre-attentive Speech Signal Processing with Adaptive Routing for Emotion Recognition

Zhang H., Pang Z., Zhao P., Tang G., Shen L., Wang G.

Biomedical Signal Processing and Control 112, 108782

Journal
2025

Applied Statistical Methods for Identifying Features of Heart Rate Associated with Nicotine Vaping

Zhao P., Yang J., Buu A.

The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse 51(2), 165–172

Journal
2025

Reproducible and Generalizable Speech Emotion Recognition via an Intelligent Fusion Network

Zhang H., Zhao P., Tang G., Li Z., Yuan Z.

Biomedical Signal Processing and Control 109, 107996

Journal
2025

Sparse Temporal-Aware Capsule Network for Robust Speech Emotion Recognition

Zhang H., Huang H., Zhao P., Yu Z.

Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence 144, 110060

Journal
2024

CENN: Capsule-Enhanced Neural Network with Innovative Metrics for Robust Speech Emotion Recognition

Zhang H., Huang H., Zhao P., Zhu X., Yu Z.

Knowledge-Based Systems 304, 112499

Journal
2024

DiGAN Breakthrough: Advancing Diabetic Data Analysis with Innovative GAN-Based Imbalance Correction

Zhao P., Liu X., Yue Z., Zhao Q., Liu X., Deng Y., Wu J.

Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine Update 5, 100152

Journal
2026

Promoting Structural Awareness and Empathy: Evaluation of a Poverty Simulation Intervention in Health Professions Education

Zhao P., Carapucci T., Alford J., Kodakandla M.

30th Annual Conference of the International Association · 2026

Conference
2025

Weighted Federated Learning with Encryption for Diabetes Classification

Zhao P., Yue Z., Liu X., Wu J.

IEEE AIxMHC · Taiwan, 2025

Conference
2022

An Attention-Based LSTM Framework for Detection of Bitcoin Scams

Zhao P., Tian W., Xiao L., Liu X., Wu J.

IEEE HDIS · Tianjin, 2022

🏆 Best Paper Nom.
2022

Prediction of Solar Power via Statistical and Machine Learning Methods

Zhao P., Tian W.

IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science 1046(1), 012006 · Tokyo, 2022

Conference
§ Contact
Tianjin UTH UTH2 Melbourne UIC Statistics HKBU Rice

Last updated: April 2026