Feng Zhang

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Feng Zhang

Feng Zhang ( Chinese  张 锋 , Pinyin Zhāng Fēng , * 1981 in Shijiazhuang , People's Republic of China ) is an American neuroscientist of Chinese origin at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Live and act

Zhang first grew up in China. In 1993 he came to the USA in Des Moines , Iowa . Even as a high school student , he was interested in genetic research. In 2004 he earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry and physics from Harvard College .

As a doctoral student with Karl Deisseroth, he worked (together with Edward Boyden ) in the work that is considered to be the foundation of optogenetics . In 2009 he received a Ph.D. from Deisseroth at Stanford University. in chemistry. Using the optogenetics method developed by Zhang, a targeted genetic manipulation , systematic examinations of intact biological systems can be carried out, especially of neurons in the intact brain.

As a postdoctoral fellow , he worked with George Church at Harvard Medical School and with Paola Arlotta at Massachusetts General Hospital . Here he used methods of synthetic biology to investigate patterns of gene expression during the ontogenesis of the brain .

Since 2011, Zhang has been an Assistant Professor at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and Cognitive Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also a member of the Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard University .

Zhang tries to understand the development of neuropsychiatric disorders using a synthetic biology approach . His working group is developing new genetic engineering methods to change the genome of a model organism in such a way that signs of known disorders appear, and investigate whether these changes are necessary and sufficient to trigger a disease. His work on increasing the precision of the CRISPR / Cas method as an instrument for genetic manipulation is considered groundbreaking.

Since 2016 Thomson Reuters has counted him among the favorites for a Nobel Prize ( Thomson Reuters Citation Laureates ) due to the number of his citations .

Awards (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c The 3rd ISTT Young Investigator Award goes to Feng Zhang (PDF, 141 kB) at the International Society for Transgenic Technologies (transtechsociety.org) ( Memento from August 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Kerri Smith: Neuroscience: Method man. In: Nature , May 29, 2013
  3. ↑ a b Alan T. Waterman Award Recipients - 2014 at the National Science Foundation (nsf.gov); Retrieved August 25, 2014
  4. ↑ Gairdner awards honor gene-editing CRISPR researchers. In: theglobeandmail.com. March 23, 2016, accessed March 23, 2016 .
  5. ↑ Web of Science Predicts 2016 Nobel Prize Winners. (No longer available online.) In: ipscience.thomsonreuters.com. September 21, 2016, archived from the original on September 21, 2016 ; accessed on September 21, 2016 (English).
  6. ^ Perl-UNC Neuroscience Prize - Previous Recipients at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (unc.edu); Retrieved August 25, 2014
  7. ^ Gabbay Award - Current Winners at Brandeis University (brandeis.edu); Retrieved August 25, 2014
  8. ↑ Tang Prize 2016
  9. ↑ Harvey Prize 2018
personal data
SURNAME Zhang, Feng
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Zhang Feng
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Chinese-American neuroscientist
DATE OF BIRTH 1981
PLACE OF BIRTH Shijiazhuang , People's Republic of China