About
Dr. Lan (Emily) Zhang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Clemson University. Her research lies at the intersection of wireless communications, AI, and healthcare applications, focusing on developing intelligent, reliable, and efficient systems for health-related Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications. Before joining Clemson, she was an assistant professor at Michigan Tech University from 2020 to 2023. Dr. Zhang’s research aims to optimize computing and communication techniques for real-time, mission-critical health applications, such as remote healthcare monitoring, infectious disease management, and personalized treatment through AI-driven medical devices. She actively collaborates with Clemson University researchers and healthcare partners to translate technological advancements into practical healthcare solutions. Her recent projects include AI driven deep brain stimulation for Parkinson’s disease treatment and collaborative learning frameworks for secure health data processing. Her current research is supported by the NSF, SC EPSCoR, and other agencies. Dr. Zhang has received prestigious awards, including the IEEE CIS TETCI Outstanding Paper, NSF CISE CRII, and MTU REF Awards. She serves as an associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology and a guest editor for leading IEEE journals. She serves as an NSF panelist, on the program committees of top conferences such as the IEEE ICDCS, AAAI, and GLOBECOM, and a reviewer for prestigious IEEE journals. Through her interdisciplinary research, Dr. Zhang is committed to advancing healthcare technology by integrating AI and wireless systems, ensuring efficient, scalable, and secure health solutions.
Visit Dr. Zhang's Faculty Profile.
How their research is transforming health care
The rapid advancement of wireless and AI techniques is reshaping modern healthcare, enabling more precise, convenient, and secure monitoring, management, and treatment technologies. Dr. Lan (Emily) Zhang’s research is at the forefront of this transformation, integrating AI, edge computing, and wireless technologies to revolutionize healthcare applications. Her work focuses on developing reliable, efficient, and secure systems to support real-time health monitoring, health data analysis, and personalized treatments. One of her key projects focuses on collaborative learning frameworks for privacy-preserving health data processing, enabling secure and efficient AI model training across distributed medical devices without exposing sensitive patient data. Additionally, she is pioneering AI-driven deep brain stimulation (DBS) for personalized Parkinson’s disease treatment, leveraging reinforcement learning and hardware-efficient computing to enhance the effectiveness of neuromodulation therapies. Her research also extends to wireless communications and computing for infectious disease monitoring, ensuring rapid detection and mitigation of outbreaks in public health settings. Dr. Zhang’s interdisciplinary approach bridges electrical and computer engineering with healthcare needs, optimizing cross-layer healthcare systems and developing AI-driven monitoring and decision-making systems. By addressing challenges such as stringent timeliness, accuracy, precision, and privacy requirements in complex healthcare services, her innovations are paving the way for next-generation, scalable healthcare solutions, holding the potential to transform digital healthcare into more accessible, intelligent, and life-saving for diverse patient populations.
News and related media
Guest Edition for Advanced Networking and Applications for Metaverse and Web 3.0.: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10485584
Funding Awardee for ADAPT Award in SC EPSCoR: https://mailchi.mp/scepscor.org/sc-espcor-newsletter-13711644?e=8337504d68
Funding Awardee for NSF CRII grant: https://blogs.mtu.edu/icc/2022/06/lan-zhang-is-pi-of-175k-nsf-grant/
Seminar at Michigan Technological University: https://blogs.mtu.edu/computing/2021/01/05/lan-zhang-to-present-cs-lecture-jan-15/
Health Research Expertise Keywords
Digital Healthcare, Hierarchical Health Monitoring System, Privacy-Aware Health Data Analysis, Distributed Health System, AI-Driven Health Control, e.g., Deep Brain Stimulation
