The major of Epidemiology and Biostatistics was established in 2003. The Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics was founded in 2013 after the reorganization in the School of Public Health. At present, the Department Chair is Dr. Wenze Zhong, together with 15 faculty members, of which 11 (73.3%) are with a doctoral degree. There are 7 senior title holders (46.7%), including 1 senior title holder and 6 associate senior title holders. There are 1 doctoral supervisor and 6 master supervisors. The average age of faculty is 34 years. In the past two years, our department has recruited many young scholars from well-known universities in Europe, United States, Hong Kong, and other domestic and foreign universities. Our team consists of young, energetic, and active researchers with international vision, and is striving to improve our department with high standards. Our faculty in the department lead a variety of grants and talent projects from the National Science Foundation, Shanghai Municipal Education Commission, Shanghai Municipal Health Commission, and other funders. The current research interests of our department are to investigate etiology, mechanisms, surveillance, and prevention of common chronic non-communicable diseases, and to study the epidemiology of infectious diseases such as COVID-19 and HPV. Other than traditional epidemiology and biostatistics, our department emphasizes bioinformatics, medical informatics, artificial intelligence (including machine learning, natural language processing, and imaging analysis), and multi-omics. Meanwhile, our department is committed to addressing major public health problems, including prevention and management of chronic diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer, through big data and multidisciplinary approaches. In the past five years, our department has undertaken 11 national and provincial scientific research projects. The department has published 236 papers within 5 years, including 106 SCI indexed papers as first author and corresponding author, 54 (50.9%) in JCR Q1 and 11 papers in Chinese. Articles are published in top journals, including JAMA, JAMA Internal Medicine, Diabetes Care, Nature Communications, Hepatology, Cancer Communications, and others.

Our department is responsible for epidemiology and statistics courses for both undergraduate and graduate students, with an average teaching workload of about 700 class hours per year for undergraduate students and 100 class hours per year for graduate students. The faculty in the department received various teaching awards at the school-level, university-level and beyond. In the past five years, the faculty in the department have supervised 49 undergraduate graduation projects, 15 undergraduate innovation and entrepreneurship training projects, and 15 undergraduate summer social practice projects. Twenty-one scientific research papers, including 9 SCI papers, have been published by undergraduate students with supervision and guidance from our faculty. The department has won a total of 28 awards, including 10 national awards, 10 provincial awards, and 11 university-level awards.