Understanding modifiable environmental and nutritional factors that shape cardiometabolic health
Dr. Mingyu Zhang is an epidemiologist and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, based in the Department of Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. His lab examines how environmental and nutritional factors influence disease risk and cardiometabolic health from pregnancy through childhood and adulthood.
Upcoming talks by Dr. Zhang
Dr. Zhang has been invited to speak at two virtual workshops in December 2026.
- December 1–2 — Developmental origins of hypertension. Metabolomics, prenatal exposures, and childhood hypertension.
- December 7–8 — Plastics and plastic chemicals. Early-life PFAS exposures and children’s cardiometabolic health, at a joint NHLBI–NIEHS workshop.
Explore research Find a paper Summer 2027 student opportunities
Dr. Zhang is the Principal Investigator of grants from the American Heart Association and the American Diabetes Association. The lab’s research also receives support through the NIH-funded Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) program. The lab draws on prospective cohorts including the Boston Birth Cohort and Project Viva, integrating longitudinal data, metabolomics, proteomics, and environmental-mixture analyses to identify modifiable risks and inform prevention.
Research focus
Pollutants and nutrition
Air pollution, PFAS, metal mixtures, and dietary factors in relation to maternal and child health.
Cardiometabolic health
Blood pressure, hypertension, obesity, and diabetes from pregnancy through midlife.
Health equity
Environmental burdens and cardiometabolic risk in racially and ethnically diverse cohorts.
Research areas
Publication examples below link to free full text.
- Women’s cardiometabolic health from pregnancy through midlife. The lab studies how toxic metals, essential elements, and nutritional factors during pregnancy relate to pregnancy complications and women’s later blood pressure, obesity, and diabetes risk.
- Pregnancy metal mixtures and midlife blood pressure — Hypertension, 2025.
- Metals and gestational diabetes in the Boston Birth Cohort — Environmental Science & Technology, 2025.
- Early-life factors and children’s cardiometabolic health. The lab examines pollutants, nutrition, and other early-life factors in relation to blood pressure, growth, and obesity from infancy through adolescence, drawing on Project Viva, the Boston Birth Cohort, and ECHO.
- Prenatal air pollution and childhood blood pressure — Hypertension, 2018.
- PFAS and blood-pressure trajectories from birth to adolescence — Journal of the American Heart Association, 2023.
- Prenatal PFAS and metal mixtures with childhood adiposity — Environmental Science & Technology, 2026.
- Nutrition, the gut microbiome, and cardiometabolic interventions. Trial-based research examines how high-fiber diets, metformin, and behavioral weight-loss strategies affect the gut microbiome, microbial metabolites, and cardiometabolic health.
- High-fiber diets and circulating short-chain fatty acids — The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2020.
- Metformin, the gut microbiome, and short-chain fatty acids — Diabetes Care, 2021.
- Metabolomics and early-life cardiometabolic development. The lab uses metabolomics to characterize biological pathways that may link early-life environmental factors with cardiometabolic development and to identify metabolic signatures associated with blood pressure in childhood and adolescence.
- Cord-blood metabolites and blood pressure in childhood and adolescence — Hypertension, 2022.
- Metabolomic signatures for adolescent blood pressure — Metabolomics, 2024.
Contact the lab
Lab PI: Dr. Mingyu Zhang
Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
For research inquiries or paper requests, email Mingyu:
