Hi, I'm Puyang ๐Ÿ‘‹
๐ŸŽ“ Postdoctoral Associate ๐Ÿ› Rice University ๐Ÿ“ Houston, TX she/her

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

๐Ÿ”ฌ Research Interests
โŒš
Wearable Devices
Physiological signal analysis, heart rate monitoring in relation to nicotine vaping events.
๐Ÿ—ฃ
Speech Emotion Recognition
Capsule networks and fusion models for robust emotion recognition in clinical settings.
๐Ÿ“Š
Longitudinal & EMA Data
Statistical methods for ecological momentary assessment in behavioral health research.
๐Ÿฉบ
Clinical Machine Learning
GAN-based methods, federated learning, and deep learning for diabetes classification.
๐ŸŒฟ
Environmental Modeling
dPL-SPARROW framework combining neural networks with watershed models.
๐Ÿšฌ
Tobacco & E-cigarette
Vaping behavior patterns and tobacco control in public health research.
๐ŸŽ“ Education
2024 โ€“ Present

Postdoctoral Associate

Rice University, Houston, TX

Advisor: Dr. Hanjie Chen

Ph.D.

Biostatistics

UTHealth Houston

Advisors: Dr. James Yang ยท Dr. Anne Buu ยท 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

๐Ÿ“š Publications
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, Feb 2025

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, May 2025

Journal
2025

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, 2025

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, 2025

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, Sep 2024

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, 2024

Journal
2025

Weighted Federated Learning with Encryption for Diabetes Classification

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

IEEE CPS, AIxMHC ยท Taiwan, 2025 ยท Accepted

Conference
2022

An Attention-Based LSTM Framework for Detection of Bitcoin Scams

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

IEEE HDIS ยท Tianjin, 2022

๐Ÿ† Best Paper Nom.
2022

Prediction of Solar Power via Statistical and Machine Learning Methods

Zhao P., Tian W.

IOP Conference Series ยท Tokyo, 2022

Conference
๐Ÿ“ฌ Let's Connect
Tianjin UTH UTH2 Melbourne UIC Statistics HKBU Rice

Last updated: February 2026