Yu Chen, MPH, PhD

I am a chronic disease epidemiologist involved in multidisciplinary research that focuses on how host and environmental factors are related to chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disease and cancer. I actively participate in national and international consortiums, including NCI cohort consortium and the Asia Cohort Consortium. Most recently, I was elected as a member of the Steering Committee of the NCI Cancer Cohort Consortium (CCC) which is responsible for the overall policy, and scientific direction of the NCI Cohort Consortium. 

For the past 24 years, I have worked with colleagues from Columbia University and the University of Chicago to study health effects of arsenic exposure in the Health Effects of Arsenic Longitudinal Study (HEALS) in Bangladesh. I am a recipient of the Outstanding New Environmental Scientist Award from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. 

Recently, I completed a project with colleagues at Vanderbilt University to investigate the role of the gastric and oral microbiome in gastric premalignant and malignant lesions.

I joined the NYU Women’s Health Study (NYUWHS) team of investigators in 2006.  I am the current PI of the cohort, an NCI-funded prospective cohort study of more than 14,000 women. I am leading the overall management of the study activities, including methodologies, data collection, field work, analysis, cancer ascertainment, and development of follow-up protocols. 

I am the program director of the Epidemiology PhD Training Program in Vilcek Institute of Graduate Biomedical Science. I direct the Epidemiology Journal Club and co-direct a course on epidemiology methods for graduate students at NYU School of Medicine.

I received my PhD with distinction in epidemiology from Columbia University in 2005. As of September 2024, I have authored 252 journal articles, with an h-index of 78 and i10-index of 195.