Sunan GAO

Biography

Welcome to my personal webpage. I’m delighted to share my academic journey with you!

I am pursuing a Master’s degree in Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University (since 2023). During this period, I served as a research assistant under the guidance of Prof. Jennifer Schrack and Prof. Ciprian Crainiceanu. I’m also fortunate to collaborate with Prof. John Muschelli.

Prior to this, I underwent a year of Biostatistics Master training at Renmin University of China (2022-2023) under the guidance of A. Prof. Yu Wang. My academic journey began with a B.Eng degree (2018-2022) earned at Zhejiang University, where I was under the supervision of Prof. Yu Zhang. I felt lucky to have engaged in research collaborations with Prof. Ming Chen, Prof. Baiyi Lu, and A. Prof. Li Li. I am dedicated to enhance my professional skills in the combination field of BIOS & BIOINFO & EPI and cultivate the ability of innovation.

Research Interest (More)

I am intrigued by the integration of aging indicators (e.g. frailty, biological age), digital biomarkers (e.g. wearable measurement), age-related disease (e.g. Dementia, CVD), and omics (e.g. Metabonomics, Metagenomics, GWAS).

Furthermore, exploring biostatistical (e.g. causal inference, functional data) and data science (e.g. transfer learning, deep learning) methods also drive my interest.

Ongoing Projects (More)

	Overall and domain-specific cognitive trajectories and objective physical activity in the ARIC Neurocognitive Study supervised by Jennifer Schrack and Ciprian Crainiceanu Submitted, ARIC Proposal #: 4442
	Internal and external exposure associations of 3-MCPD and glycidol and their esters using machine learning [Github] supervised by Yu Zhang Under Review
	Urinary metabolic profile analysis of 3-chloro-1,2-propanediol di-palmitate ester treatment with Eicosapentaenoic acid intervention: based on non-targeted metabolomics and molecular docking supervised by Yu Zhang Under Review
	Decoding the Gut-Brain Connection in Autism: Metabolomic Mediators Between gut Microbiota and ASD Risk supervised by Yu Wang Working Paper

Selected Publications (More)

	Evidence for Serum metabolites mediate causal relationships between gut microbiota and cognitive functions: a Mendelian randomization study DOI Sunan Gao, Heming Deng, Shaobo Wen, Yu Wang FOOD & FUNCTION (2025, Q1, IF ≈ 6)
	Comparing step counting algorithms for high-resolution wrist accelerometry data in older adults in the ARIC study Sunan Gao, Xinkai Zhou, Lily Koffman, …, John Muschelli The Journals of Gerontology, Series A (2025, Q1, IF ≈ 4)
	Effects of accelerated biological aging on depressive symptoms in a causal reasoning framework DOI Sunan Gao, Heming Deng, Shaobo Wen, Yu Wang J AFFECTIVE DISORDERS (2023, Q1, IF ≈ 5)
	A machine learning-based data mining in medical examination data: a biological features-based biological age prediction model DOI Qing Yang1, Sunan Gao1, Junfen Lin, …, Ming Chen BMC BIOINFORMATICS (2022, Q1, IF ≈ 3)
	Soy protein/chitosan-based microsphere as Stable Biocompatible Vehicles of Oleanolic Acid: An Emerging Alternative Enabling the Quality Maintenance of Minimally Processed Produce DOI Sunan Gao, Mingyi Yang, Zisheng Luo, …, Li Li FOOD HYDROCOLLOID (2022, Q1, IF ≈ 11)

Other Publications

• CRAN R Package (2023). Heming D, Sunan, G. UOTM: Uncertainty of Time Series Model Selection. Link: https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/uotm/index.html

• National Invention Patent (CN-115006369-A, 2021-2023). A brain-targeted lipid nanocapsule drug-carrying system and its preparation method and application. Link: https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/patent/CN-115006369-A

Teaching Experience

	Methods in Biostatistics I-IV @ Johns Hopkins University Graduate Teaching Assistant) Aug. 2024 - May. 2025
	Epidemiologic Methods (I-III) @ Johns Hopkins University Graduate Tutor Sept. 2024 - May. 2025
	Engineering Mechanics @ Zhejiang University Undergraduate Tutor Oct. 2020 - Jan. 2021

Honors & Awards

Abe Lilienfeld Scholarship Fund (0.5%) Master Tuition Scholarship, Johns Hopkins University ZJU Outstanding Undergraduate Thesis (0.5%) CHU KOCHEN Scholarship (Nominated, 0.2%) National Scholarship, Ministry of Education of P.R. China (0.5%) First Prize, Zhejiang Academic Science Competition (0.5%) Gold Prize, International Student Innovation Competition (0.5%)

2025 2023 2022 2021 2021、2020、2019 2020 2020

Education

	Master student @ Johns Hopkins University Aug. 2023 - May. 2025 GPA: 3.9 / 4.0
	Master training @ Renmin University of China Sep. 2022 - Jun. 2023 GPA: 3.9 / 4.0
	B.Eng in Food Science & Engineering @ Zhejiang University Sep. 2018 - Jun. 2022 GPA: 4.0 / 4.0, Ranking: 1 / 50