Rate My Professor Jian-Kang Zhu

Jian-Kang Zhu is a world-renowned molecular geneticist and plant biologist serving as Chair Professor, Vice-Chancellor, and President of Macau University of Science and Technology since January 2026. He earned a B.S. in soils and agricultural chemistry from Beijing Agricultural University in 1987, an M.S. in botany from the University of California, Riverside in 1990, and a Ph.D. in plant physiology from Purdue University in 1993, followed by postdoctoral training at Rockefeller University. His distinguished career spans multiple leading institutions: he joined the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at Auburn University in 1994, moved to the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Arizona in 1996 where he was promoted to full professor in 2000, served as Presidential Chair Professor and Director of the Institute for Integrative Genome Biology at the University of California, Riverside from 2004, directed the Plant Stress Genomics Research Center at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology from 2009 to 2011, held the position of Distinguished Professor in the Departments of Biochemistry and Horticulture and Landscape Architecture at Purdue University from 2010 to 2020, founded and directed the Shanghai Center for Plant Stress Biology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2011, and since 2022 has been Chair Professor in the School of Medicine at Southern University of Science and Technology while founding the Institute of Advanced Biotechnology.