Tongzhang Zheng
· Professor of EpidemiologyBrown University · Environmental Health
Active 1988–2025
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About
Corwin M. Zigler is a Professor of Biostatistics at the Brown University School of Public Health. His research focuses on quantitative methodology for evaluating the health impacts of environmental and climate-related exposures. His statistical research primarily involves causal inference, with particular emphasis on spatially-indexed data, spatial confounding, interference networks, physical process modeling, and Bayesian methodology. His work integrates statistical methodology, epidemiology, large-scale computation, and atmospheric science to better understand how environmental and climate policies impact human health. Dr. Zigler's research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Health Effects Institute, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He has served on multiple specialty panels for the U.S. EPA Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee. Before joining Brown in 2024, he served as faculty in the Department of Statistics and Data Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin and in the Department of Biostatistics at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He completed his Ph.D. in Biostatistics at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2010. His professional recognitions include being elected a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, receiving the Health Policy Statistics Section Mid-Career Achievement Award in 2019, and the Rothman Epidemiology Prize for the best paper published in Epidemiology in 2019.
Research topics
- Surgery
- Internal medicine
- Medicine
- Medical physics
- General surgery
- Oncology
Selected publications
Alcohol drinking and head and neck cancer risk: the joint effect of intensity and duration
British Journal of Cancer · 2020 · 131 citations
BACKGROUND: Alcohol is a well-established risk factor for head and neck cancer (HNC). This study aims to explore the effect of alcohol intensity and duration, as joint continuous exposures, on HNC risk. METHODS: Data from 26 case-control studies in the INHANCE Consortium were used, including never and current drinkers who drunk ≤10 drinks/day for ≤54 years (24234 controls, 4085 oral cavity, 3359 oropharyngeal, 983 hypopharyngeal and 3340 laryngeal cancers). The dose-response relationship between…
Lessons learned from the INHANCE consortium: An overview of recent results on head and neck cancer
Oral Diseases · 2020 · 56 citations
OBJECTIVE: To summarize the latest evidence on head and neck cancer epidemiology from the International Head and Neck Cancer Epidemiology (INHANCE) consortium. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: INHANCE was established in 2004 to elucidate the etiology of head and neck cancer through pooled analyses of individual-level data on a large scale. We summarize results from recent INHANCE-based publications updating our 2015 overview. RESULTS: Seventeen papers were published between 2015 and May 2020. These studies…
Environmental Research · 2024-12-11 · 12 citations
reviewOpen accessRecent evidence suggests that exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) may increase the risk of different cancer types, such as kidney and testicular cancers. Instead, evidence for lung, head and neck, and thyroid cancer is sparse. Hence, we aimed to summarize available literature on the topic. We searched Pubmed and Scopus in January 2024 to retrieve relevant studies and estimated pooled relative risks (RRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for lung, head and neck, and thyroid c…
European Journal of Cancer Prevention · 2024-12-09 · 7 citations
reviewOpen accessBACKGROUND: Per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) are a group of synthetic chemicals used since the 1940s in industrial and consumer applications. These substances are known or suspected to cause cancer, particularly kidney and testicular cancer. However, their association with other types of cancer is not well understood. This review aims to investigate the link between PFAS exposure and the risks of other cancers, including gastrointestinal cancers such as esophageal, gastric, colorecta…
BMC Medicine · 2024-10-08 · 4 citations
articleOpen accessBACKGROUND: Telomere length (TL), mitochondrial DNA copy number (mtDNAcn), and DNA methylation age (DNAmAge) are common aging biomarkers. However, research on the associations between these three markers at birth and subsequent metabolic status was limited. This study aimed to evaluate the association between TL, mtDNAcn, and DNAmAge in newborns and the variation in metabolic hormones of children at 3 years old. METHODS: This research involved 895 mother-child pairs from a birth cohort in China,…
Recent grants
NIH · $73k · 2006
NIH · $565k · 2014
NIH · $1.7M · 1998
Frequent coauthors
- 223 shared
Theodore R. Holford
Yale University
- 206 shared
Nathaniel Rothman
- 166 shared
Stephen J. Chanock
- 162 shared
Peter Boyle
University of California, Los Angeles
- 150 shared
Yawei Zhang
Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College
- 142 shared
Sophia Wang
Sun Yat-sen University
- 142 shared
Brian P. Leaderer
Providence Center
- 128 shared
Shelia Hoar Zahm
Centre International de Recherche sur le Cancer
Education
- 2010
Ph.D.
University of California at Los Angeles
- 2005
M.A.
Boston University
- 2005
B.A.
Boston University
Awards & honors
- Elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association 2023
- Health Policy Statistics Section Mid-Career Achievement Awar…
- Rothman Epidemiology Prize for the best paper published in E…
- International Society for Bayesian Analysis Mitchell Prize (…
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