Background
Zhang was born in China and moved to Iowa with his mother at age 11, where he attended Theodore Roosevelt High School in Des Moines, graduating in 2000.
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Feng Zhang
Edit Profileuniversity professor neuroscientist
Education
He then received his Doctor of Philosophy in chemistry and bioengineering from Stanford University in 2009 under the guidance of Karl Deisseroth where he developed the technologies behind optogenetics with Edward Boyden.
Career
He also has appointments with the Broad Institute of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard (where he is a core member) and the McGovern Institute for Brain He is most well known for playing a central role in the development of optogenetics and CRISPR technologies. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry and Physics from Harvard University in 2004 where he worked with Xiaowei Zhuang. He served as an independent Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows.
Zhang"s lab is focused on using synthetic biology to develop technologies for genome and epigenome engineering to study neurobiology.
As a postdoc, he began work on using TAL effectors to control gene transcription. Based on previous work by the Sylvain Moineau Laboratory, Doctor Zhang began work to harness and optimize the CRISPR system to work in human cells in 2011.
While Zhang"s group was optimizing the Cas9 system in human cells, the collaborating groups of Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna reported a biochemical characterization of the CRISPR-Cas9 system, including the design of a single, chimeric guide Ribonucleic acid (sgRNA) capable of facilitating cleavage of deoxyribonucleic acid using purified Cas9 protein and sgRNA. Zhang"s group further optimized this Doudna/Charpentier sgRNA design for expression in mammalian cells and subsequently reported the first application of Cas9 for genome editing in human cells the following year. Zhang is a recipient of the National Institutes of Health Pioneer Award and a Searle Scholar.
He was named one of Massachusetts Institute of Technology Technology Reviews"s TR35 in 2013.
2015 Tsuneko & Reiji Okazaki Award (Nagoya University).
Achievements
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Nationality
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Ethnicity
Awards
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Alan T. Waterman Award National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Award Perl-UNC Neuroscience Prize Jacob Heskel Gabbay Award in Biotechnology and Medicine Tsuneko & Reiji Okazaki Award Canada Gairdner International Award Tang Prize
The Gairdner Foundation International Award is given annually at a special dinner to three to six people for outstanding discoveries or contributions to medical science.The Gairdner Foundation International Award is given annually at a special dinner to three to six people for outstanding discoveries or contributions to medical science.