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Ming Ding (Chinese: 丁明) is an assistant professor in the department of emergency medicine at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is an epidemiologist, and her research focuses on nutrition and cardiovascular epidemiology integrating lifestyle, genetics, and method development. She has a strong interest in epidemiological methods and biostatistics.

EDUCATION

2011-2016     Doctor of science (ScD) in Nutrition and Epidemiology, Harvard University

2009-2011     Master of Science (MSc) in Nutrition, Peking University, China

2004-2009    Bachelor of Medicine in Preventive Medicine (M.D. equivalent), Pekng University, China

RESEARCH AREAS

  1. Nutrition and cardiovascular epidemiology integrating diet, genetics, and lipidomics. My research utilizes large cohort studies to investigate etiology and prevention of cardiometabolic disease, including obesity, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes. One direction is to examine how lifestyle across adulthood affects CVD progression, with the goal to integrate primary and secondary prevention. Another direction is to assess causal associations of lipids in lipoproteins (particularly HDL lipids) with risk of CVD using UK Biobank data.
  2. Epidemiological methods. I have developed a smoothing mixture model (SMM) for trajectory analysis, which delineates trajectories in a highly flexible manner. The R script of SMM can be found here. Another model I recently developed is a two-stage linear mixed model (TS-LMM) for summary-data-based multivariable Mendelian randomization, which corrects for random errors in summary statistics of risk factors and disease outcome. The R macro of TS-LMM can be found here. 
  3. Emergency medicine. I work collaboratively with clinicians by providing support on epidemiological design and data analysis to solve important questions in emergency medicine. 

FUNDED GRANTS

04/01/2022-03/31/2024  A summary-data-based Mendelian randomization (MR) method with application to correlated lipidomic data.

NIH/NHGRI                                                  R21HG012365                                                        Role: PI 

10/01/2018-05/31/2020   Examining Trajectories of Lifestyle Factors Associated with Healthy Aging and Longevity Using a Novel Mixture Model 

NIH/NIA                                                        R03 AG060247                                                      Role: PI

PUBLICATIONS

A full list of my publications can be found here. 

Nutrition and cardiovascular epidemiology

Ding M, Fitzmaurice GM, Arvizu M, Willett WC, Manson JE, Rexrode KM, Hu FB, Chavarro JE. Associations between patterns of modifiable risk factors in mid-life to late life and longevity: 36 year prospective cohort study. BMJ Med. 2022;1(1):e000098. doi: 10.1136/bmjmed-2021-000098. eCollection 2022. PubMed PMID: 36936601; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC9978682.

Ding M, Li J, Qi L, Ellervik C, Zhang X, Manson JE, Stampfer M, Chavarro JE, Rexrode KM, Kraft P, Chasman D, Willett WC, Hu FB. Associations of dairy intake with risk of mortality in women and men: three prospective cohort studies. BMJ. 2019 Nov 27;367:l6204. doi: 10.1136/bmj.l6204. PubMed PMID: 31776125; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6880246.

Ding M, Bhupathiraju SN, Satija A, van Dam RM, Hu FB. Long-term coffee consumption and risk of cardiovascular disease: a systematic review and a dose-response meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies. Circulation. 2014 Feb 11;129(6):643-59. doi: 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.113.005925. Epub 2013 Nov 7. Review. PubMed PMID: 24201300; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3945962.

Epidemiological methods and biostatistics

Ding M. A Two-stage Linear Mixed Model (TS-LMM) for Summary-data-based Multivariable Mendelian Randomization. medRxiv. 2023 Apr 27;. doi: 10.1101/2023.04.25.23289099. PubMed PMID: 37162968; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC10168515.

Ding M, Chavarro JE, Fitzmaurice GM. Development of a mixture model allowing for smoothing functions of longitudinal trajectories. Stat Methods Med Res. 2021 Feb;30(2):549-562. doi: 10.1177/0962280220966019. Epub 2020 Oct 27. PubMed PMID: 33106119; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC8009804.

Emergency medicine

Publications are coming soon.