Dr. Weiwen Zhang is a Baiyang Chair Professor of Tianjin University; Founding Director of Tianjin University Center for Biosafety Research and Strategy (TJU-CBRS); Deputy director of Frontier Science Center of Synthetic Biology of Ministry of Education of China. Dr. Zhang graduated from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1996 with a doctoral degree in microbiology. Prior to joining Tianjin University, Dr. Zhang was a faculty with Arizona State University, and a Senior Principal Investigator with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy. Dr. Zhang is currently Chief Scientist for the National Key R&D Research Program of China - Synthetic Biology program, and Chief Investigator for the Key Strategic Project of the Chinese Association for Science and Technology on dual-use biotechnology governance. Dr. Zhang has broad research experience in microbial synthetic biology and biochemical engineering, has authored more than 250 peer-reviewed scientific papers, 4 scientific books, 12 book chapters and 18 international, US and China patents. Dr. Zhang has served in a number of scientific advisory boards on biosecurity, biosafety, biodiversity, food science and technology and so on for multiple ministries and agencies in and outside of China, was also one of the two “Guests of the Meeting” invited by the UN BWC Expert Meeting in Geneva on dual-use issues of synthetic biology in 2018, and Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group on Synthetic Biology of the UN Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) since 2022. Dr. Zhang chaired the “track 2” dialog of the Biosafety and Biosecurity in the Era of Synthetic Biology between China and the U.S. His team has also been involved in policy and governance of dual-use biological research in recent years, contributing to the formation of several national regulation protocols in China and the China Biosecurity Law, as well as to two international guidelines developed for the World Organization of Animal Health (OIE) (2019) and the Biological Weapon Convention (BWC) of the United Nations, such as Tianjin Biosecurity Guidelines for Codes of Conduct for Scientists (2022).
