Dr. Zhang is a cancer epidemiologist with experience in conducting population-based studies to investigate the role of nutrition in cancer prevention and control. She has worked with colleagues from Columbia University and NIH to evaluate gene-environment interactions in association with cancer risk. Support by the Susan G. Komen Foundation, she studied energy balance and breast cancer risk in sisters enrolled in the Breast Cancer Family Registry, a NCI-funded international family registry for breast cancer. 

After joining Tufts University, She has expanded her research to nutrition and cancer survivorship. In the past few years, she has led pioneer studies investigating patterns of weight gain during and after cancer treatment and associated risk factors such as dietary intake and levels of energy expenditure in pediatric survivors of acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most common cancer diagnosed in children. An interdisciplinary team lead by Dr. Zhang has recently completed the development of a web- and mobile-based nutrition intervention program to help parents transition family into healthy eating and active living as soon as the child completes early stage of cancer treatment.