Directory Entry For: Charlie Zhang
Biography
Dr. Charlie Zhang is a professor in the Department of Geographic & Environmental Sciences at the University of Louisville (UofL). He also serves as a Ph.D. faculty member in Urban Planning & Public Affairs and is the GIS navigator for the Center for Integrative Environmental Health Sciences at UofL. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina, Columbia, in 2006.
Dr. Zhang is an urban and health geographer specializing in demographic analysis, urban crime, environmental exposure, health disparities, and applications of mapping and geospatial analysis methods. His research addresses both community-level challenges and broader investigations into the environmental and health impacts of development, urbanization, and pollution at national and global scales.
His representative projects span a wide range of pressing public health and environmental issues. These include assessing children’s neurobehavioral risks from exposure to fly ash near coal‑fired power plants; diagnosing cancer disparities in rural Kentucky; analyzing associations between proximity to coal ash impoundments and elevated rates of cancer and birth defects; and evaluating the health impacts of lead exposure from aging housing stock and contaminated soil. He has also examined school segregation and white flight in urban areas, mapped spatial patterns and neighborhood correlates of crime, housing foreclosure, and opioid overdoses, and investigated the spatiotemporal aspects of urban sprawl and air pollution in metropolitan areas.
Research Interests
Dr. Zhang's research interests span a broad spectrum of topics, including environmental pollution, health disparities, urban sprawl, demographic analysis of schools and residential neighborhoods, political election mapping, and crime analysis.
Dr. Zhang’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the American Cancer Society, the Rivkin Center for Ovarian Cancer, Kentucky’s Cabinet for Health and Family Services (CHFS), and Humana Foundation. His major research projects have addressed a wide range of public health and environmental issues, such as the relationship between environmental pollution and ovarian cancer, exposure to heavy metals in coal ash and its impact on children’s neurobehavioral development, childhood blood lead poisoning, cancer disparities in rural Kentucky, and the association between proximity to coal-fired power plants and cancer prevalence across the United States.
His publications have appeared in premier academic journals including Applied Geography, Environmental Pollution, Environmental Research, Environmental Science & Technology, Envrionmental Geochemistry and Health, Exposure & Health, Geographical Review, GeoJournal, Habitat International, Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology, Journal of Rural Health, Urban Geography, and Journal of Urban Affairs.
Degrees and Certifications
University of South Carolina
University of Nebraska at Omaha