Yaomin Xu, Ph.D. - Faculty Profile

Biography

Dr. Yaomin Xu, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Data Science & Biostatistics at the Peter O'Donnell Jr. School of Public Health, UT Southwestern Medical Center. He joined UTSW in 2025 after a decade on the faculty at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where he held joint appointments in Biostatistics and Biomedical Informatics and founded the Translational Bioinformatics & Biostatistics (TBILab) group.

Dr. Xu’s research integrates high-dimensional statistics, ML/AI, and cloud-scale analytics to extract actionable insights from real-world health data. His work spans modeling disease multimorbidity, studying clonal hematopoiesis in cancer and related diseases, conducting phenome- and genome-wide association studies, and evaluating drug safety and effectiveness using EHR-linked genomics and biobank data. Supported by the NIH, CDC, DoD, and major foundations—both as principal investigator and quantitative lead on large multi-center studies—he has published more than 80 peer-reviewed papers in leading journals.

At UTSW, Dr. Xu directs the Translational Informatics Program in collaboration with the Department of Internal Medicine—an interdisciplinary hub that unites statisticians, clinicians, and data engineers to transform electronic-health-record and biobank resources into precision-health discoveries. He teaches HDS 5302 “Advanced Data Analysis Methods II” and mentors PhD students, fellows, and junior faculty in reproducible workflows and interdisciplinary team science for large-scale population cohort studies.

Dr. Xu serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Clinical and Translational Science and CHEST—Translational Data Science, ML & AI; chairs conference sessions for ASA SDSS, ENAR, and ICSA; and contributes to institutional curriculum, IT-promotion, and cloud advisory committees. His lab’s open-source tools (e.g., PheMIME, associationSubgraphs) help investigators explore complex multimorbidity patterns and deploy scalable phenomic-genomic pipelines.

He earned his PhD in Statistics from Case Western Reserve University and BS/MS degrees in Geophysics from the University of Science & Technology of China. Before academia, he led scientific-computing teams at Cleveland Clinic, shaping his emphasis on production-grade analytics platforms.

A committed mentor and collaborator, Dr. Xu has advised several PhD students in biostatistics and other fields, numerous postdoctoral fellows, and guided junior faculty in developing big data analytics and interdisciplinary research skills.

Research Interest

Big Data Analytics
Biobank Genomics/GWAS
Biostatistics
Clinical Informatics
Cloud Computing
Data Clustering
Data Mining and Pattern Recognition
Data Visualization
EHR/PheWAS
Graphical ML/AI
Precision Health
Statistical Analysis of Network Data
Translation Bioinformatics

Publications

Featured Publications

PheMIME: an interactive web app and knowledge base for phenome-wide, multi-institutional multimorbidity analysis.: Zhang S, Strayer N, Vessels T, Choi K, Wang GW, Li Y, Bejan CA, Hsi RS, Bick AG, Velez Edwards DR, Savona MR, Phillips EJ, Pulley JM, Self WH, Hopkins WC, Roden DM, Smoller JW, Ruderfer DM, Xu Y, J Am Med Inform Assoc 2024 Nov 31 11 2440-2446
Interoperability of phenome-wide multimorbidity patterns: a comparative study of two large-scale EHR systems.: Strayer N, Vessels T, Choi K, Zhang S, Li Y, Han L, Sharber B, Hsi RS, Bejan CA, Bick AG, Balko JM, Johnson DB, Wheless LE, Wells QS, Philips EJ, Pulley JM, Self WH, Chen Q, Hartert T, Wilkins CH, Savona MR, Shyr Y, Roden DM, Smoller JW, Ruderfer DM, Xu Y, medRxiv 2024 May
Interactive network-based clustering and investigation of multimorbidity association matrices with associationSubgraphs.: Strayer N, Zhang S, Yao L, Vessels T, Bejan CA, Hsi RS, Shirey-Rice JK, Balko JM, Johnson DB, Phillips EJ, Bick A, Edwards TL, Velez Edwards DR, Pulley JM, Wells QS, Savona MR, Cox NJ, Roden DM, Ruderfer DM, Xu Y, Bioinformatics 2023 Jan 39 1
Incident cytopenia and risk of subsequent myeloid neoplasm in age-related clonal hematopoiesis: a multi-biobank case-control study.: Brogan J, Kishtagari A, Corty RW, Pershad Y, Vlasschaert C, Sharber B, Heimlich JB, Luo L, Ferrell PB, Savona MR, Xu Y, Bick AG, EClinicalMedicine 2025 Jun 84 103283
Genetic drivers and clinical consequences of mosaic chromosomal alterations in 1 million individuals.: Zhao K, Pershad Y, Poisner HM, Ma X, Quade K, Vlasschaert C, Mack T, Khankari NK, von Beck K, Brogan J, Kishtagari A, Corty RW, Li Y, Xu Y, Reiner AP, Scheet P, Auer PL, Bick AG, medRxiv 2025 Mar
irAE-GPT: Leveraging large language models to identify immune-related adverse events in electronic health records and clinical trial datasets.: Bejan CA, Wang M, Venkateswaran S, Bergmann EA, Hiles L, Xu Y, Chandler GS, Brondfield S, Silverstein J, Wright F, de Dios K, Kim D, Mukherjee E, Krantz MS, Yao L, Johnson DB, Phillips EJ, Balko JM, Mohindra R, Quandt Z, medRxiv 2025 Mar
Frequency and timing of multiple skin cancer development in five cohorts.: Wheless L, Liao KP, Zheng S, Li Y, Yao L, Xu Y, Madden C, Ike J, Smith IT, Mosley D, Grossarth S, Hartman RI, Wilson O, Hung A, Wehner MR, J Am Acad Dermatol 2025 Feb
Risk of Major Adverse Cardiovascular Events Following Nicotinamide Exposure.: Wheless L, Guennoun R, Michalski-McNeely B, Gonzalez KM, Weiss R, Zhang S, Yao L, Madden C, Chen HC, Triozzi JL, Tao R, Wilson O, Wells QS, Hung A, Bibee K, Hartman RI, Xu Y, JAMA Dermatol 2025 Feb
Large language models improve the identification of emergency department visits for symptomatic kidney stones.: Bejan CA, Reed AM, Mikula M, Zhang S, Xu Y, Fabbri D, Embí PJ, Hsi RS, Sci Rep 2025 Jan 15 1 3503
The impact of imprecise case definitions in electronic health record research: a melanoma case-study from the Million Veteran Program.: Wheless L, Mosley D, Dochtermann D, Pyarajan S, Gonzalez K, Weiss R, Maas K, Zhang S, Yao L, Xu Y, Madden C, Ike J, Smith IT, Grossarth S, Wilson O, Hung A, Fillmore NR, Brown K, Landi MT, Hartman RI, Arch Dermatol Res 2025 Jan 317 1 308