Lixin Zhang - Biography#

Prof. Lixin Zhang is the Director of National Key Laboratory of Bioreactor Engineering (NKLBE) at East China University of Science and Technology, China. The NKLBE was ranked top 5% after national review (more than 500 National Key Laboratories) in 2017. His research interest is mainly focused on taxonomy-guided diversification of marine microbial natural product library, mining synergistic medicines through high throughput screening and increasing their production titers through synthetic biology strategy. He pioneered the Avermectin project and received The National Medal Award for Excellence in Science and Technologies in 2017. Avermectin products are now made exclusively in China and help saved 200 million of Africans from river-blind diseases. He worked in 3 pharmaceutical companies and served as an assistant professor abroad before returning back China in 2004. He directly couched 5 iGEM teams and served on the Advisory Board for other teams. He served as the first FEMS (Federation of European Microbiological Societies) ambassador in China and one of the first ambassadors in FEMS history. As a Chief Scientist, he led twice the projects sponsored by The National Key Fundamental Research Program of China, and was awarded Distinguished Young Scholars by The National Science Foundation of China (NSFC). His academic achievements and technological innovations are highlighted by 7 books, 300+ papers published in Nature Biotechnology and other international journals and 44 patents (28 Chinese patents and 16 PCT patents). At present, he is serving as the Editor-in-Chief for Synthetic and Systems Biotechnology since 2016 and Associate Editor-in-Chief for Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology since 2004 as well as the SYNBIOCHEM External Advisory Board for the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology. Previously, he served as the President for the International Chemical Biology Society (ICBS) during 2016-8, an Executive Board Member of International Committee on the Biology of Actinomycetes (ISBA) and Genetics of Industrial Microorganisms (GIM).

Education:

• 1994 - 1998 Postdoctoral Fellow. Dept. of Pharmacology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA. USA
  
• 1990 - 1994 Ph.D. Microbiology, with Honors, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
  
• 1986 - 1990 B.S. Microbiology, with Honors, Shandong University, P. R. China