Career
Zhu collaborated with Cao Huaidong of Lehigh University in verifying Grigori Perelman"s proof of the Poincaré conjecture. The Cao–Zhu team is one of three teams formed for this purpose. The other teams were the Tian–Morgan team (Gang Tian of Princeton University and John Morgan of Columbia University) and the Kleiner–Lott team (Bruce Kleiner of Yale University and John Lott of University of Michigan).
Zhu and Cao published a paper in the June 2006 issue of the Asian Journal of Mathematics with an exposition of the complete proof of the Poincaré and geometrization conjectures.
They also published an erratum disclosing that they had forgotten to cite properly the previous work of Kleiner and Lott published in 2003. In the same issue, the AJM editorial board issued an apology for what it called "incautions" in the Cao–Zhu paper.