PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

James Zou

Also known as J Zou, James Y Zou, James Y. Zou, James Y. Zou

James Zou is a Stanford biomedical data scientist who applies machine learning to health and biology and studies human–AI collaboration. He studies mathematics at Duke and Cambridge, earns a Harvard doctorate, and joins Stanford after research work at Microsoft. He coauthors Gradio, an open-source interface for machine-learning models, and develops Trial Pathfinder to study cancer-trial eligibility with real-world data. In 2025, CollabLLM wins an ICML Outstanding Paper Award, and ISCB names him the Overton Prize recipient as he presents AI scientist agents for biomedical discovery.

Works
620
Citations
41,510
h-index
80

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 14 October 2026.

Photo of James Zou

Timeline

  1. Before 2016

    Mathematics meets biology

    At Duke, he majors in mathematics and physics, then studies Part III mathematics at Cambridge with a Gates Scholarship. He earns a Harvard doctorate in applied mathematics and works on computational biology.

  2. Since 2016

    Joining biomedical data science

    Before Stanford, he works at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He joins Stanford in 2016 and is an associate professor of biomedical data science, with courtesy appointments in computer science and electrical engineering.

  3. 2019

    Making models shareable

    He coauthors the Gradio paper, which describes an open-source Python package for creating visual interfaces for machine-learning models and sharing them through a URL.

  4. 2022

    AI for clinical trials

    With colleagues, he develops Trial Pathfinder, open-source software that uses real-world data to assess cancer-trial eligibility criteria. The Clinical Research Forum gives the work a 2022 Top 10 Clinical Research Achievement Award.

  5. 2025

    Teaching models to collaborate

    He coauthors CollabLLM, a framework that trains language models to collaborate across multiple turns. The work wins an ICML 2025 Outstanding Paper Award.

  6. 2025

    Agents for biological discovery

    At ISMB/ECCB, he presents the Virtual Lab, a team of AI scientist agents that runs research meetings and designs nanobody binders for COVID variants, which researchers validate experimentally. His talk outlines human researcher–AI collaboration. ISCB names him the 2025 Overton Prize recipient.

Sources and credits

Photo: james-zou.com; Machine learning | James Zou | Stanford; creator not stated. License: Not stated by source. Source: james-zou.com. Cropped to a square and resized. Ask us to remove or replace this photo.

  1. James Zou simons.berkeley.edu. Checked 14 October 2026.
  2. Fresh faculty: James Zou, biomedical data science department stanforddaily.com. Checked 14 October 2026.
  3. James Zou's Profile | Stanford Profiles profiles.stanford.edu. Checked 14 October 2026.
  4. [1906.02569] Gradio: Hassle-Free Sharing and Testing of ML Models in the Wild arxiv.org. Checked 14 October 2026.
  5. A conversation with James Zou, PhD, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Data Science, Stanford University pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Checked 14 October 2026.
  6. ICML 2025 Awards icml.cc. Checked 14 October 2026.
  7. Distinguished Keynotes - ISMB/ECCB 2025 iscb.org. Checked 14 October 2026.