Contact Me

Email: zzhang [at] pace [dot] edu

Department of Information Technology
School of Computer Science and Information Systems
Pace University
One Pace Plaza
New York, NY 10038


Looking for PhD students

If you are passionate about designing and developing novel information and communication technologies for healthcare, please drop me a line!


Students

Current Students

  • Enze Bai, Ph.D. Student
  • Le Zhou, Ph.D Student

Alumni


I am an Associate Professor in the Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems at Pace University where I am directing the Smart Health Lab. My research spans the fields of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), Wearable and Mobile Technology, and Healthcare Informatics. I am particularly interested in designing, developing, and evaluating novel technologies to support information collection, decision making, and collaboration in highly dynamic healthcare settings. My ultimate goal is to support everyone involved in healthcare (e.g., patients and care providers) to quickly collect, integrate, and comprehend data to make informed decisions, and ultimately, improve clinical workflow and patient outcome.

My research has been supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institute of Health (NIH), and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). I am a recipient of the NSF CRII Award in 2020 and NSF CAREER Award in 2023. I also received multiple internal grants from Pace University, including the Wilson Faculty Fellowship Award, Covid-19 Collaborative Interdisciplinary Research Award, and Scholarly Research Grants.

Prior to joining Pace, I completed my Ph.D. in Information Science in the College of Computing and Informatics at Drexel University. During my PhD studies, I was advised by Professor Aleksandra Sarcevic.


News

June 2024: Paper accepted to AMIA'24
Our paper, "Designing for Better Pre-hospital Communication: Participatory Design of a Telemedicine Application for Emergency Departments", has been accepted to AMIA 2024.

June 2024: Received an R15 grant from NIH!
Excited to receive an R15 research grant from the National Institute of Health (NIH), entitled "Design and Development of an Evidence-based Cognitive Aid for Out-of-Hospital Treatment of Pediatric Patients." (Role: PI; Total Award Amount: $419,294; Award Period: June 2024-May 2027).

March 2024: Received an R21/R33 grant from AHRQ!
Excited to receive an R21/R33 grant from the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality (AHRQ), entitled "LabGenie: A Patient-Engagement Tool to Aid Older Adults' Understanding of Lab Test Results." (Role: co-I; Total Award Amount: $1,014,336; Award Period: April 2024-March 2029). This is a collaborative project with researchers from Florida State University.

March 2024: Paper accepted to IJHCI
Our paper, "Touchless Interaction for Smart Glasses in Emergency Medical Services: User Needs and Experiences", has been accepted to the International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction (IJHCI).

Jan 2024: Paper accepted to CHI
Our paper, "Understanding nurses’ information exchange with limited English proficient participants for alert response in community telehealth", has been accepted to ACM CHI 2024.

Sep 2023: Paper accepted to JAMIA Open
Our paper, "Toward alert triage: Scalable qualitative coding framework for analyzing alert notes from the telehealth intervention program for seniors (TIPS)", has been accepted to JAMIA Open.

July 2023: Three papers accepted to AMIA'23
Three of my papers have been accepted to the American Medical Informatics Association Annual Symposium:
Paper 1: Information seeking and sensemaking in emergency medical service through simulation video review.
Paper 2: Experiences and perceptions of distinct telehealth delivery models for remote patient Monitoring among older adults in the community.
Paper 3: Annotation and information extraction of a consumer-friendly health website for enhancing laboratory test reporting in patient portals.

June 2023: Paper accepted to Frontiers in Computer Science
Our paper, "Human-centered design and evaluation of AI-empowered clinical decision support systems: a systematic review", has been accepted to Frontiers in Computer Science.

Feb 2023: Received the NSF CAREER Award!
I am so hornored to receive the NSF CAREER Award to continue my research on supporting emergency care work through wearable technology and touchless interaction methods.

Feb 2023: Paper accepted to JMIR Medical Informatics
Our paper, " Smart glasses for supporting distributed care work: A systematic review", has been accepted to JMIR Medical Informatics.

Dec 2022: Paper accepted to JAMIA Open
Our paper, "Designing and Implementing Smart Glass Technology for Emergency Medical Services: A Sociotechnical Perspective", has been accepted to JAMIA Open.

Nov 2022: Paper accepted to JMIR Formative Research
Our paper, "Continued Use of Contact-Tracing Applications: Insights from A Multi-Country Study", has been accepted to JMIR Formative Research.

Sep 2022: Paper accepted to JMIR
A paper I co-authored regarding Design and Evaluation Challenges of Conversational Agents in Healthcare and Wellbeing has been accepted to Journal of Medical Internet Research.

June 2022: Paper accepted to CSCW'22
Our paper, "Characteristics and Challenges of Clinical Documentation in Self-Organized Fast-Paced Medical Work", has been accepted to CSCW 2022.

Dec 2021: Paper accepted to JMIR Human Factors
Our paper, "Applications and User Perceptions of Smart Glasses in Emergency Medical Services", has been accepted to JMIR Human Factors

Nov 2021: One paper accepted to iConference 2022 and another paper accepted to the Journal of Informatics for Health and Social Care
Paper1: "Hands-Free Electronic Documentation in Emergency Care Work through Smart Glasses";
Paper2: "Older Adults’ Perceptions of Community-Based Telehealth Wellness Programs: A Qualitative Study".

Sep 2021: Received an R21 grant from AHRQ!
Excited to receive an R21 grant from the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality (AHRQ), entitled "A Novel Approach for Supporting Care Coordination across Distributed Emergency Care Teams." (Role: PI, $300,000, Sep 2021-Sep 2023). This is a collaborative project with researchers from the University of Colorado.