Dr. Jian-Kang Zhu is the director of Institute of Advanced Biotechnology, Southern University of Science and Technology since 2022. He earned his bachelor degree in Soil and Agricultural Chemistry from Beijing Agricultural University in 1987, his master degree in Botany from University of California, Riverside in 1990, and his doctorate in Plant Physiology from Purdue University in 1993. He was a faculty member at the University of Arizona from 1996 to 2003, at University of California-Riverside from 2004 to 2010, at KAUST from 2009 to 2011, at Purdue University from 2010 to 2020, and at Shanghai Center for Plant Stress Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences from 2011 to 2021. His research interests include gene editing and gene therapy technologies, epigenetic gene regulation, plant stress biology study et.al.