Organizer

BSc (Fudan University, China); Ph.D. (University of Calgary, Canada); Member of Chinese Academy of Sciences; Founding Member of the Academy of Sciences of Hong Kong.

Founding Dean, School of Life Sciences, Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech).

Prof. Mingjie Zhang obtained his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Fudan University, Shanghai in 1988, and his Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry in the University of Calgary, Canada in 1994. After a brief postdoctoral training in the Ontario Cancer Institute, Toronto, Canada, he established his own laboratory as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) in 1995. Before becoming to be the Founding Dean of School of Life Sciences at SUSTech, Prof Zhang was a Kerry Holdings Professor of Science, Senior Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study, and Chair Professor in the Division of Life Science, HKUST.

Research in Prof. Zhang’s laboratory has been focusing on two areas in the past 20 years. The first area concerns the structural and biochemical basis of neuronal signaling complex organization by scaffold proteins. The second area is how neurons develop polarity during their development and maintain the polarity in their adulthood. Zhang’s lab has been approaching these two questions by a combination of structural biology, biochemistry, and cell biology approaches. They have published more than 200 research articles in the prestigious scientific journals including Science, Cell, Mol Cell, Neuron, Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, Nature Neuroscience, PNAS, EMBO J, etc. Their studies on liquid-liquid phase separation in synapse formation and plasticity have potential profound impact in neuroscience. Prof. Zhang has won a number of awards (e.g. 2006 State Natural Science Award，2011 Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation Prize for Scientific and technological Progress, 2021 CC Tan Life Time Achievement Award in Life Science etc) for his excellence in scientific research. Prof. Zhang was elected as a member of Chinese Academy of Science in 2011. Prof. Zhang is a Founding member of the Academy of Science of Hong Kong. Prof. Zhang has been dedicating huge amount of his energy in training younger generation of scientists. About 20 of Ph.D. graduates and postdoctoral fellows trained in his lab have established their independent research groups around the world.

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