Yaguang Zheng

Yaguang Zheng is an assistant professor at NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing. Her research focuses on cardiometabolic risk reduction by leveraging mobile health, electronic health records, and data science techniques. Zheng has explored behavioral phenotypes through the use of wireless devices in clinical trials and real-world settings and their impacts on cardiometabolic disease prevention and management. Zheng’s initial work focused on lifestyle behavior changes through mobile health, more specifically, using mobile health for self-monitoring and its impact on weight-loss outcomes. After identifying a critical knowledge gap in the area of engagement with mobile health, Zheng conducted a pilot study that found that older adults were able to use multiple mobile devices to improve diabetes self-management, debunking traditional perceptions of older adults as being skeptical of multiple mobile technologies.

Zheng has also applied machine learning algorithms to analyze data from a large real-world sample that has yielded varied patterns of use of wireless devices over the course of a year, findings which are helping to target subgroups of individuals who need long-term engagement in using mobile health devices. More recently, Zheng has worked on electronic health record data, including mobile health data from wearable devices, like continuous glucose monitors, which has real-world application for clinical practice.

Prior to joining the NYU Rory Meyers faculty, Zheng was a postdoctoral scholar supported by NIH grant T32 NR008857 Technology: Research in Chronic and Critical Illness at the University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing.

Zheng earned her PhD at the University of Pittsburgh. She also received a Nursing Informatics Certificate during her postdoctoral training.