Chief professor, School of Life Science

Academician, CAS

Researcher, CAS Center for Excellence in Molecular Plant Sciences

Dr. Zhao is a microbiologist who serves as the chief scientist of Biomedical Big Data Center in CAS Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health as well as the Director of the Expert Committee of the CAS Key Laboratory for Synthetic Biology. He was involved in the initiation of Chinese genomics, bioinformatics, proteomics, transcriptomics, cloning and sequencing with respect to several genetic diseases and Chinese microbial genomes. In 2003 he took charge of the fruitful research on SARS molecular epidemiology and the evolution of the SARS coronavirus. Since then, he has made some groundbreaking contribution in the fields of protein acetylation, enteric microbiome and synthetic biology. He received an award for science and technology from the Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation in 2005 and an honorary doctorate from the Purdue UniversityCollege of Agriculturein 2014.