Dr Christian Chan Zhao-Yang

Dr Christian Chan Zhao-Yang

  • Lecturer
Department of Actuarial Science and Risk
  • School of Mathematical Sciences
SDGs Focus

Biography

Christian obtained his PhD in biostatistics from the University of Calgary in 2024. His PhD thesis concerned the development of novel statistical methods to select important variables/covariates to be included in complex survival models. After completing his PhD, he was a postdoctoral associate at the Nephrology research group at the University of Calgary, working on the application of multi-state model on the progression of kidney failure.

In addition to his knowledge in statistics, he obtained a bachelor's degree in Actuarial Science, for which he received the exemptions to the exams CT1-CT8 from the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA).

Academic & Professional Qualifications

  • PhD in Biostatistics, University of Calgary, Canada (2024)
  • Masters in Statistical Science, Leiden University, Netherlands (2019)
  • BSc (Honours) in Actuarial Science, Heriot-Watt University, UK (2017)

Research Interests

  • Survival Analysis
  • Applications of statistics in medical science
  • Multi-state models
  • Variable Selection

Teaching Areas

  • Actuarial Science
  • Statistics
  • Biostatistics

Courses Taught

  • Life Contingencies I - May 2026

Notable Publications

  1. 2025 - Chan C, Sawhney S, Ahmed SB, et al. Sex Differences in Mortality and Receipt of Kidney Replacement Therapy Among Adults With Stage 5 Chronic Kidney Disease. JAMA Intern Med. 2026;186(1):89–97. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2025.5979
  2. 2025 - Christian Chan, Xiaotian Dai, Thierry Chekouo, Quan Long, Xuewen Lu, Broken adaptive ridge method for variable selection in generalized partly linear models with application to the coronary artery disease data, Journal of Computational Mathematics and Data Science, Volume 17, 2025, 100127, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcmds.2025.100127.

Professional Associations

Statistical Society of Canada