Dr. Zhang received his B.S. in Biological Sciences from Shandong University in 2003 and his M.S. in Biophysics from University of Guelph in 2006. He earned his Ph.D. in Biochemistry with Professor Vern L. Schramm at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 2011. His doctoral research was focused on the enzymatic transition state and catalytic mechanism for rational design of potent enzyme inhibitors as antimalarial and anticancer drugs. Dr. Zhang received postdoctoral training with Professor Peter G. Schultz at the Scripps Research Institute and California Institute for Biomedical Research (Calibr) from 2011 to 2014. His postdoctoral work established a versatile approach to the generation of novel antibody chimeras with excellent physical, biological, and pharmacological properties for drug development. In the USC, Dr. Zhang’s group are very interested in developing innovative technologies to systematically dissect post-translational modification (PTM) enzymes essential  for life-threatening diseases and identifying novel therapeutic targets and drug inhibitors. Another major research area in Dr. Zhang’s group lies in antibody engineering. They are aimed at creating potent monoclonal antibodies with high specificity as novel immunotherapeutic tools for cancer, immune disorders, neurodegenerative, and infectious diseases, and developing new and robust protein engineering approaches for efficient generation of peptide- and protein-based diagnostics and therapeutics.

Email: yongz@usc.edu
Tel: 323-442-1405
Fax: 323-224-7473

Mailing Address:
1985 Zonal Avenue, PSC 606
Los Angeles, CA 90089-9121