About Dr. Zhang:

Dr. Kai Zhang received his Bachelor of Science from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in 2002 and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2008. His Ph.D. work focused on the development of experimental and theoretical approaches for single-molecule fluorescence spectroscopy and nonlinear optical microscopy. In 2009, he joined Stanford University as a postdoctoral scholar and made a transition from the field of physical chemistry to neurobiology, studying axonal transport in neuronal diseases with single-molecule fluorescence microscopy. In August 2014, Dr. Zhang joined the Biochemistry Department of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) as a tenure-track assistant professor. At Illinois, the Zhang laboratory develops new biotechnologies including optogenetics and single-molecule fluorescence microscopy to investigate how growth factor-mediated signal transduction regulates cell fate determination. The long-term goal of Zhang’s research is to delineate how spatiotemporal regulation of growth factor-mediated signal transduction determines cell differentiation during embryonic development and how this signaling process is compromised in diseases such as neurological disorders and cancers. Current research is supported by NIH/NIGMS and NIMH.