Jiamin Zhou
Research Associate
Work
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2025.11 - Present San Francisco, CA, USA
Staff Research Associate IV
University of California, San Francisco
SRA in Dr. Aaron Field’s Laboratory for Orthopaedic Biomechanics and Biotransport in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery. Currently leading a new study on the development and validation of age-relative measures of biochemical intervertebral disc health (NIH R01AR085550):
- Advanced MRI biomarker analysis
- Meta-genome-wide association study (GWAS) analysis for developing polygenic risk score
- Management of clinical research study data assets and databases
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2019.09 - 2025.11 San Francisco, CA, USA
Staff Research Associate III
University of California, San Francisco
SRA in Dr. Aaron Field’s Laboratory for Orthopaedic Biomechanics and Biotransport in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery. Previously part of Dr. Roland Krug's lab in the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging. Researched characterization of chronic low back pain (Back Pain Consortium Research Program) through:
- Automatic vertebral body and paraspinal muscle segmentation
- Fat quantification of whole-body MRI
- Statistical analysis of multi-omic data
- Processing of whole genome sequencing data
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2016.06 - 2017.08 Dallas, TX, USA
Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Research fellow in Dr. Qinghua Liu’s lab in the Department of Biochemistry. Studied the molecular mechanism of odor-induced innate fear mediated by Trpa1 in mice:
- Dissected and sectioned mouse brain tissue
- Modified a PCR protocol to target and produce a restriction enzyme recognition site on Trpa1
- Developed a method to selectively label bound proteins using biotinylation
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2013.06 - 2014.08 Dallas, TX, USA
Research Intern
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Intern in Dr. Zhigao Wang’s lab in the Department of Molecular Biology. Studied how the herb Citrullus colocynthis kills cancer cells through necrosis:
- Developed a technique to detect phosphorylated proteins in Western blots
Education
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2018.08 - 2019.06 San Francisco, CA, USA
M.Sc. in Biomedical Imaging
University of California, San Francisco
Thesis: ‘Spectrome-AI: a Neural Network Framework for Inferring MEG Spectra’
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2015.08 - 2018.06 Cambridge, UK
B.A. (Hons) in Natural Sciences
University of Cambridge
Dissertation: ‘Modelling calcium feedback mechanisms in light adaptation in vertebrate cone photoreceptors’
Teaching
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Bootcamp Instructor
University of California, San Francisco
MSBI Bootcamp
Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022
Taught incoming Master’s students with no prior programming background how to code in MATLAB
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Teaching Assistant
University of California, San Francisco
MR Pulse Sequences
Spring 2020
Physical Principles of CT, PET, and SPECT Imaging
Fall 2019
Awards
- 2026
Best Paper Award
International Society for the Study of the Lumbar Spine
Intradiscal propionic acid levels in chronic low back pain patients with modic type 1 changes are associated with systemic immune cell activation
Jan Devan*, Jiamin Zhou*, Po-Hung Wu, Noah B. Bonnheim, Conor O'Neill, Oliver Distler, Jeffrey C. Lotz, Thomas M. Link, Aaron J. Fields, Stefan Dudli - 2026
ISSLS Prize in Clinical Science
International Society for the Study of the Lumbar Spine
Data-driven classification of lumbar spine degeneration trajectories in chronic low back pain
Terence P. McSweeney, Zehra Akkaya, Jiamin Zhou, Po-Hung Wu, Noah B. Bonnheim, Thomas M. Link, Jaro Karppinen, Jeffrey C. Lotz, Simo Saarakkala, Aaron J. Fields, Aleksei Tiulpin - 2023
ISSLS Prize in Bioengineering Science
International Society for the Study of the Lumbar Spine
Age- and sex-related differences in lumbar intervertebral disc degeneration between patients with chronic low back pain and asymptomatic controls
Noah B. Bonnheim, Ann A. Lazar, Anika Kumar, Zehra Akkaya, Jiamin Zhou, Xiaojie Guo, Conor O'Neill, Thomas M. Link, Jeffrey C. Lotz, Roland Krug, Aaron J. Fields
Talks
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International Society for the Study of the Lumbar Spine
Atlanta, GA, USA, 2025
’Serum inflammatory profiles associate with intradiscal propionic acid levels in chronic low back pain patients with Modic changes’
oral presentation, shortlisted for Best Paper Award
‘Modic changes associate with gut microbial dysbiosis'
oral presentation
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BACPAC Spring Meeting
Chapel Hill, NC, USA, 2025
’Phenotyping of comeBACK patients with Modic changes using MRI, MRS, and serum cytokines’
oral presentation
Skills
Experimental Design MRI Physics Statistical Data Analysis Statistical Modeling Technical Writing Clinical Database Management REDCap ELISA PCR Python Numpy Scipy Scikit-learn Tensorflow Matplotlib Seaborn Plotly Pandas Jupyter MATLAB R LaTeX Git Bash SLURM/SGE HPC SQL JMP Nextflow nf-core MS Office Notion English Mandarin