👋About Me

I am a third-year PhD student in Management Science and Engineering (MS&E) at Stanford University, where I am advised by Professor Margaret Brandeau and Professor Marissa Reitsma. My research focuses on health policy, decision science, and clinical toxicology. Currently, I am developing AI-augmented decision models and simulations to inform the design and evaluation of health programs and interventions.

🎓Education

• Stanford University
  • Ph.D. in Management Science and Engineering (MS&E), 09/2023-06/2028 (Expected)
  • Master of Science in Epidemiology and Clinical Research (Epi & CR), 09/2025-06/2026 (Expected)
• Sichuan University – Pittsburgh Institute (SCUPI)
  • Bachelor of Engineering in Industrial Engineering (IE), 09/2019-06/2023

Training

• Stanford University, Department of Pediatrics, Division of Adolescent Medicine
  • Student Employee, 03/2026-Present
• Asian-Pacific Network (APN) for Global Change Research
  • Researcher (Part-time), 09/2020-06/2023
• Sichuan University–The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Institute for Disaster Management and Reconstruction (IDMR)
  • International Disaster Reduction and Emergency Management Innovation Class, 09/2020-06/2023

📚Publications

#- Qin H^#, Ling Y^#, Shui T^#, Jing X, Shi A, Zha Y, Fu Y, Zheng F, Yan X. Global, regional, and national burden of substance use disorder in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2021: A systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021. (Accepted by Annals of Medicine)

- This study used data from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021 to evaluate the global, regional, and national burdens of substance use disorders (SUDs), alcohol use disorders (AUDs), drug use disorders (DUDs), and DUD subtypes (opioid, cocaine, amphetamine, and cannabis) from 1990 to 2021.

• He M, Liu K, Balakrishnan N, Ling Y. Likelihood Inference for Semiparametric Mixture Cure Generalized-Gamma Frailty Model. Communications in Statistics - Simulation and Computation, 2026, 1–16.
  • This paper develops a semiparametric mixture cure proportional hazards frailty model for survival data where some individuals may be cured and some unobserved heterogeneity or within-cluster correlation may exist.
• Qiu J, Zheng H, Gu J, Wu L, Gong Z, Ling Y, Ran J, He M, Sun H. Associations of urban heat island and its metabolomic profiles with all-cause and cause-specific mortality in middle-aged and older adults. Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety, 2026, 314, 120062.
  • This prospective cohort study aimed to investigate associations between urban heat island exposure and mortality outcomes in urban residents, and to identify metabolic pathways mediating these relationships.
• Wang X, Li J, Ling Y, Sun Z, Liu Y, Qiu H, Liu S. Current status, challenges, and high-quality development pathways for the integration of artificial intelligence and sports medicine. Chinese Journal of Medicine, 2026, 106(1), 13-18. (In Chinese)
  • This paper summarized key applications and benefits of AI in sports medicine, identified major challenges (data, interpretability, privacy/fairness, regulation/payment), and proposed strategies for high-quality integration into practice.
• Ling Y^#, Mao Z^#, Li J^#, Zhang H, Zhou C, Liu W, Zhou Y, Jiang L, Li M, Zhao H, Nie S, Xu J, Geng P, Xu C, Huang J, Chen F, Zhang J, Sun H. Leveraging plasma concentrations to optimize extracorporeal treatment in acute diquat poisoning: A multi-center retrospective cohort study. Clinical Toxicology, 1–12, 2025.
  • This multi-center retrospective cohort study aimed to evaluate the clinical value of plasma diquat concentrations in guiding personalized extracorporeal treatment regimens (hemoperfusion or a combination of hemoperfusion and continuous veno-venous hemodiafiltration) for patients with acute diquat poisoning.
  • This study included 163 patients with acute diquat poisoning, and they were divided into three groups based on plasma diquat concentrations measured upon presentation to the emergency department: low (<100 μg/L), medium (100–1,000 μg/L), and high (≥1,000 μg/L).

• GBD 2023 Demographics Collaborators. Global age-sex-specific all-cause mortality and life expectancy estimates for 204 countries and territories and 660 subnational locations, 1950–2023: A demographic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2023. The Lancet, 2025.

• GBD 2023 Causes of Death Collaborators. Global burden of 292 causes of death in 204 countries and territories and 660 subnational locations, 1990–2023: A systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2023. The Lancet, 2025.

• GBD 2023 Disease and Injury and Risk Factor Collaborators. Burden of 375 diseases and injuries, risk-attributable burden of 88 risk factors, and healthy life expectancy in 204 countries and territories, including 660 subnational locations, 1990–2023: A systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2023. The Lancet, 2025.

• Ling Y, Meng Q, Zhang Y, Zhang T, Liu K, Chen S, Yuan X, Liu S, Wang S, Yang Z, Jiang H, Fu Y. Investigation on the dynamic trajectory of platelet count in healthy population from 2010 to 2021 in Sichuan Han adult. Chinese Journal of Laboratory Medicine, 2025, 48(9), 1222-1226. (In Chinese)
  • This retrospective study used group-based trajectory modeling to identify the longitudinal patterns and influencing factors of platelet counts among healthy adults in Sichuan Province from 2010 to 2021.
• Yi T, Guo J, Meng Y, Ling Y, Ke Y, Guo Z. MSTI-GNN: A multi-scale spatiotemporal interactive graph neural network method for precise hydropower unit status prediction. Renewable Energy, 2025, 256, 123969.
  • This study proposed a multi-scale spatiotemporal interactive graph neural network (MSTI-GNN). This network uses a dynamic adaptive graph generation module that integrates both long-term stable dependencies and short-term dynamic features, moving beyond traditional static graph construction.
• Ling Y^#, Mao Z^#, Liu W^#, Zhou C, Li J, Jiang L, Li M, Zhao H, Nie S, Wu C, Chen J, Bai G, Ren G, Xu J, Chen F, Zhang J, Sun H. Severity indices of diquat poisoning for triage and prognosis in acute diquat poisoning: A multi-center prospective cohort study. Annals of Emergency Medicine, 2025, 85(6), 512-520.
  • This study developed and validated severity indices for diquat poisoning (SIDPs) that enable emergency physicians to assess mortality risk for triage and 28-day prognosis using self-reported clinical data and laboratory biomarkers.
  • This multicenter cohort study involved 204 patients. Predictors identified by the Burota algorithm and stepwise Cox regression were incorporated into Cox proportional hazards models to develop SIDPs, one for triage and one for prognosis (SIDP-T and SIDP-P, respectively).
  • We launched a user-friendly online platform that enables emergency physicians to apply severity indices directly at the point of care.
• Nie J, Huang T, Sun Y, Peng Z, Yang H, Zheng D, Guo F, Xu M, Ling Y, Zhao W, Yan X, Shui T. Influence of the enterovirus 71 vaccine and the covid-19 pandemic on hand, foot, and mouth disease in China based on counterfactual models: Observational study. JMIR Public Health and Surveillance, 2024, 10, e63146.
  • This study investigated the long-term epidemiological trends of hand, foot, and mouth disease in Yunnan Province, China, and evaluated the impacts of the enterovirus 71 vaccination program and the COVID-19 pandemic using counterfactual autoregressive integrated moving average models.
• Yang Q^#, Wang L^#, Zhang X^#, Lu P^#, Pan D^#, Li S^#, Ling Y^#, Zhi X^#, Xia L, Zhu Y, Chen Y, Liu C, Jin W, Reinhardt JD, Wang X, Zheng Y. Impact of an enhanced recovery after surgery program integrating cardiopulmonary rehabilitation on post-operative prognosis of patients treated with CABG: Protocol of the ERAS-CaRe randomized controlled trial. BMC Pulmonary Medicine, 2024, 24, 512.
  • This protocol designed a pragmatic, randomized-controlled, parallel four-arm, clinical trial to evaluate potential superiority of embedding cardiopulmonary rehabilitation in enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) over ERAS alone, as well as to investigate effects of differential timing of cardiopulmonary rehabilitation within ERAS (pre-, post-, perio-operative) on post-operative cardiopulmonary complications following coronary artery bypass grafting surgery.
• Guo Z, Jing X, Ling Y, Yang Y, Jing N, Yuan R, Liu Y. Optimized air quality management based on air quality index prediction and air pollutants identification in representative cities in China. Scientific Reports, 2024, 14, 17923.
  • This study developed a VMD-CSA-CNN-LSTM model to predict air quality index, using variational mode decomposition (VMD), chameleon swarm algorithm (CSA), convolutional neural networks (CNN), and long short-term memory (LSTM) networks.
  • The developed model was validated using data from nine representative cities in China (Hohhot, Yinchuan, Lanzhou, Beijing, Taiyuan, and Xi’an, Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuhan), and random forest algorithm was used to identify major air pollutants in each city.
• Wang X, Li J, Wei X, Liu S, Li J, Li Y, Ling Y, Lu D, Chen J. Research on the construction of a value adjustor for the inpatient rehabilitation services based on the principle of value-based health care. Chinese Journal of Health Policy, 2024, 17(3), 48-55. (In Chinese)
  • This study developed a value adjustor for inpatient rehabilitation services, which can provide comparable assessment of rehabilitation outcomes, and further support value-based payment reform under Chinese healthcare insurance system.
• Chen S^#, Ling Y^#, Zhou F, Qiao X, Reinhardt JD. Trajectories of cognitive decline among people over 45 years old with diabetes in China: A nationally representative longitudinal study (2011~2018). PLOS ONE, 19(5), e0299316.
  • This study found three cognitive trajectories among Chinese adults aged 45 and older with diabetes using data from the nationally representative China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS).
  • We employed a growth mixture model to identify cognitive trajectories, and examined baseline risk factors using weighted multinomial logistic regression.
• Fernandez G, Asari M, Uy N, Veitata S, Fayazi M, Ling Y, Xu Q, Wang H, Ramos LV, and Singh S. Developing capacity for post-typhoon disaster waste management in Lautoka, Fiji, and Makati, Philippines. APN Science Bulletin, 2023, 13(1).
  • This work aimed to enhance the capacity of Lautoka, Fiji, and Makati, Philippines, for effective post-typhoon disaster waste management.
  • The project conducted training needs assessments, developed and delivered six targeted training modules, facilitated stakeholder workshops, and guided the participatory creation of disaster waste management contingency plans, supported by international academic collaboration.
• Xue Q, Ling Y, Tian B. Portfolio optimization model for gold and bitcoin based on weighted unidirectional dual-layer LSTM model and SMA-slope strategy. Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience, 2022, 1869897.
  • This study integrated a weighted unidirectional dual-layer long short-term memory (LSTM) model for daily price prediction with a particle swarm-optimized simple moving average (SMA) and slope-based trading strategy.
  • The developed model enhanced buy/sell signals using k-slope indicators, and its effectiveness was evaluated through a five-year trading simulation.

Working Papers

• Ling Y^#, Shahmon E^#, Brandeau ML, Yamin D. Multi-scale modeling of periodicity for missing data imputation in time series: A smartwatch application. (Under Review at Scientific Reports)

(# for equal contribution)

📢Presentations

Invited Talks

• A generative agent framework to simulate behaviorally realistic cancer screening trajectories. INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) Healthcare Conference. Raleigh, NC. (07/2026)
• Evaluating housing-based interventions for people experiencing homelessness and opioid use disorder in California: A microsimulation model. INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) Healthcare Conference. Raleigh, NC. (07/2026)
• Evaluating housing-based interventions for people experiencing homelessness and opioid use disorder in California: A microsimulation model. Rocky Mountain Poison & Drug Safety. Denver, CO. (05/2026)
• Risk stratification and heterogeneity for organ damage in acute diquat poisoning: A multi-center cohort study. ATS (American Thoracic Society) International Conference. Orlando, FL. (05/2026)
• Improving imputation of missing data in time series through multi-scale modeling of periodicity: A smartwatch application. INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) Annual Meeting. Atlanta, Georgia. (10/2025)
• Multi-center research findings in clinical toxicology of Jiangsu Province. Academic Conference on Clinical Toxicology of the Jiangsu Medical Association. Nanjing, China. (07/2025)
• Overview on prospective and performance-oriented payment systems for health services. International Society of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine. Sydney, Australia. (06/2024)
• Content analysis of Chinese policies on disaster waste management. Global Summit of the Global Alliance of Disaster Research Institutes. Virtual. (08/2020)

Posters

• Effects of extracorporeal treatments on patient survival in acute poisoning: A multi-center target trial emulation. ATS (American Thoracic Society) International Conference. Orlando, FL. (05/2026)
• Cost-effectiveness analysis of metformin and glucagon-like peptide-1 in overweight-obese polycystic ovarian syndrome. RISE UP for Breast Cancer Conference. San Francisco, CA. (02/2026)
• Severity indices of diquat poisoning for triage and prognosis in acute diquat poisoning: A multi-center prospective cohort study. ATS (American Thoracic Society) International Conference. San Francisco, CA. (05/2025)
• Leveraging plasma concentration levels to optimize extracorporeal treatment in acute diquat poisoning: A multi-center retrospective cohort study. ATS (American Thoracic Society) 2025 International Conference. San Francisco, CA. (05/2025)

Participants

• Stanford Cancer Institute Research Conference. Stanford, CA. (03/2026)
• UCSF Breast Oncology Program Annual Scientific Retreat. San Francisco, CA. (03/2026)
• AHEW (Annual Health Econometrics Workshop). Ann Arbor, MI. (11/2025)
• ATS (American Thoracic Society) International Conference. San Diego, CA. (05/2024)

💡Patents

• Liang Y, Ling Y, Li Y, Liu L, Xu N, and Jin L, inventors; Sichuan University, assignee. Air Purification System. Patent No. ZL 2021 2 2679101.4. March 8, 2022.
• Jing X, Zhu Y, Xu L, Jing N, Sun L, Ling Y, Zhang R, Tu W, Zhang L, Huang X, Yan G, and An N, inventors; City University of Hefei, assignee. Construction Site Sprinkler Device Integrating Rotation and Elevation. Patent No. ZL 2022 2 0890424.X. April 18, 2022.

👩‍🏫Teaching

• MS&E111X/211X: Introduction to Optimization (Accelerated), Stanford University (2026 Spring)
• MS&E111DS/211DS: Introduction to Optimization: Data Science, Stanford University (2026 Winter)
• MS&E220: Probabilistic Analysis, Stanford University (2025 Autumn)
• MS&E264: Healthcare Engineering, Stanford University (2024 Spring)
• Technical Elective: Service Management, SCUPI (2023 Spring)
• Technical Elective: Data Analytics in Industrial Engineering, SCUPI (2022 Fall & 2023 Spring)
• IE1070: Probability, Random Variables and Distributions, SCUPI (2022 Fall)
• Global Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management, IDMR (2022 Fall)
• MATH0290: Differential Equations, SCUPI (2021 Fall & 2022 Spring)
• MATH0240: Analytical Geometry and Calculus 3, SCUPI (2022 Spring)
• MATH0280: Matrix and Linear Algebra, SCUPI (2021 Fall)
• MATH0230: Analytical Geometry and Calculus 2, SCUPI (2021 Spring)

🤝Service

Academic Community

• Mentee, To My Younger Self (TMYS) Mentorship Program, INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) Forum for Women in Operations Research and Management Science (WORMS) (04/2026-Present)
• Student Liaison, INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) HAS (Health Applications Society) (01/2026-Present)
• Mentor, Stanford Women in Math Mentoring (SWIMM), Stanford University (09/2023-Present)

Journal Ad Hoc Reviewer

• npj Digital Medicine
• BMC Public Health
• BMC Emergency Medicine
• The Gerontologist
• Informatics and Health
• Preventive Medicine Reports
• Nursing Research and Practice
• European Journal of Medical Research
• Frontiers in Medicine
• Frontiers in Toxicology
• Frontiers in Pharmacology
• World Journal of Virology
• World Journal of Psychiatry
• World Journal of Methodology
• World Journal of Clinical Cases
• World Journal of Gastroenterology
• World Journal of Gastrointestinal Surgery
• World Journal of Gastrointestinal Oncology
• Chemosphere
• Scientific Reports
• Atmospheric Environment
• The Journal of Supercomputing
• Artificial Intelligence in Medical Imaging
• Indonesian Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Conference Full-Paper Reviewer

• 2025 International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML)
• 2024 Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS)

Conference Abstract Reviewer

• 2026 International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR)
• 2026 Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM)

🎖️Honors & Awards

• ATS-ISRD (International Society for Respiratory Diseases) Young Investigator Award (2026)
• MS&E Departmental Fellowship, Stanford University (2023 & 2024)
• Outstanding Graduate, Sichuan Province, China (2023)
• “Top 10” Excellent Students, Sichuan University (2023)
• Best Presentation in “Integrated Disaster Science Academic Salon”, IDMR (2023)
• First Prize, Outstanding Senior Project Poster Award, SCUPI (2023)
• National Scholarship, China (2020 & 2022)
• Outstanding Student, Sichuan University (2020 & 2021 & 2022)
• Outstanding Graduate, Sichuan University (2022)
• “Top 100” Excellent Students, Sichuan University (2022)
• Excellent Student Scholarship, IDMR (2021 & 2022)
• Student of the Year, SCUPI (2022)
• First Class Comprehensive Scholarship, Sichuan University (2021)
• Yongzhuang Top Ten Scholarships for College Students, Sichuan University (2021)
• Dean’s List, SCUPI (2021)
• Meritorious Winner, Mathematical Contest in Modeling (2021)
• Academic Star, SCUPI (2020)