Dr. Zhang is professor and director of the Signature Program in Neuroscience and Behavioral Disorders at Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore and Steenbock Professor in Behavioral and Neural Sciences at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. 

Dr. Zhang received his MD and MS in China and his PhD in Canada. He has developed technology to guide human stem cells to functionally specialized nerve cell types that are impaired in many neurological and psychiatric conditions. He has also developed stem cell-based platforms for studying neural degeneration and testing drugs for neurological diseases. In parallel, he is developing cell therapy for neurological diseases like Parkinson’s disease and spinal cord injury using rodent and nonhuman primate models. Dr. Zhang has served as a reviewer or consultant for numerous agencies and scientific journals, including the NIH, FDA, and research foundations. He was a founding member of the WiCell Institute and co-founder of BrainXell Inc and BrainXell Therapeutics.