Yimin Zhao

University of Washington

Seattle, WA

I am a PhD student in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Washington, where I work closely with Professors Jeff Leek, Mike Wu, and Kevin Lin. I also collaborate with Professor Pang Wei Koh on several LLM projects. Prior to UW, I earned my Master’s degree in Biostatistics from Johns Hopkins University, where I was advised by Hongkai Ji, and my Bachelor’s degree in Applied Mathematics from Wuhan University.

My research focuses on developing statistical and computational methods for high-throughput genomics data. More recently, I have transitioned toward the intersection of AI and healthcare. I am especially interested in factuality assessment, rubric-based evaluation of open-ended responses, and building agentic systems for real-world healthcare applications, such as patient question answering and automated scheduling systems.

news

Mar 02, 2026	New preprint on arXiv! PanCanBench is now available.

selected publications

Under Review
SCOPE: Localizing fate-decision states and their regulatory drivers in single-cell differentiation

Yimin Zhao, Connor Finkbeiner, Manu Setty, and 1 more author

2026

Under review at Nature Communications

Abs Bib Code

Computational method to localize branch point in cell development based on conformal inference, semi-supervised learning and density clustering.
@article{zhao2026scope, title = {SCOPE: Localizing fate-decision states and their regulatory drivers in single-cell differentiation}, author = {Zhao, Yimin and Finkbeiner, Connor and Setty, Manu and Lin, Kevin Z.}, year = {2026}, note = {Under review at Nature Communications}, }

Under Review

PanCanBench: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Evaluating Large Language Models in Pancreatic Oncology

Yimin Zhao, Sheela R Damle, Simone E Dekker, and 13 more authors

2026

Under review at NEJM AI

Abs arXiv Bib Website

@article{zhao2026pancan,
  title = {PanCanBench: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Evaluating Large Language Models in Pancreatic Oncology},
  author = {Zhao, Yimin and Damle, Sheela R and Dekker, Simone E and Geng, Scott and Silva, Karly Williams and Hubbard, Jesse J and Fernandez, Manuel F and Zelada-Arenas, Fatima and Alvarez, Alejandra and Flores, Brianne and Rodriguez, Alexis and Salerno, Stephen and Wright, Carrie and Wang, Zihao and Koh, Pang Wei and Leek, Jeffrey T},
  year = {2026},
  note = {Under review at NEJM AI},
}

Nat Commun

A minimal gene set characterizes multiple classes of tumor-specific TIL among different cancer types

Zhen Zeng, Tianbei Zhang, Jiajia Zhang, and 16 more authors

Nature Communications, 2025

DOI Bib HTML

@article{zeng2025minimal,
  title = {A minimal gene set characterizes multiple classes of tumor-specific TIL among different cancer types},
  author = {Zeng, Zhen and Zhang, Tianbei and Zhang, Jiajia and Li, Shuai and Connor, Sydney and Zhang, Boyang and Zhao, Yimin and Wilson, Jordan and Singh, Dipika and Kulikauskas, Rima and Church, Candice D. and Pulliam, Thomas H. and Jani, Saumya and Nghiem, Paul and Topalian, Suzanne L. and Forde, Patrick M. and Pardoll, Drew M. and Ji, Hongkai and Smith, Kellie N.},
  journal = {Nature Communications},
  volume = {16},
  number = {1},
  pages = {1070},
  year = {2025},
  publisher = {Nature Publishing Group UK London},
  doi = {10.1038/s41467-025-55956-3},
}