Prof. Huimin Zhao
Steven L. Miller Chair, Professor, Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Dr. Huimin Zhao is the Steven L. Miller Chair of chemical and biomolecular engineering and professor of chemistry, biochemistry, and bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), director of NSF AI Institute for Molecule Synthesis (moleculemaker.org), NSF iBioFoundry (ibiofoundry.illinois.edu), and NSF Global Center for Reliable and Scalable Biofoundries, and Editor in Chief of ACS Synthetic Biology. He received his B.S. degree in Biology from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1992 and his Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 1998 under the guidance of Nobel Laureate Dr. Frances Arnold. Prior to joining UIUC in 2000, he was a project leader at the Industrial Biotechnology Laboratory of the Dow Chemical Company. He was promoted to full professor in 2008. Dr. Zhao has authored and co-authored over 460 research articles and over 30 issued and pending patent applications. In addition, he has given over 530 plenary, keynote, or invited lectures. Thirty-eight (38) of his former graduate students and postdocs became professors or principal investigators around the world. Dr. Zhao received numerous research and teaching awards and honors such as SIMB Charles Scott Award, AIChE Daniel I.C. Wang Award, AIChE FP&B Division Award, ECI Enzyme Engineering Award, ACS Marvin Johnson Award, SIMB Charles Thom Award, and NSF CAREER Award. His primary research interests are in the development and applications of synthetic biology, machine learning, and laboratory automation tools to address society’s most daunting challenges in health, energy, and sustainability.
Research Interests
Publications
Selected Journals
X. Huang, B. Wang, Y. Wang, G. Jiang, J. Feng, and H. Zhao. “Photoenzymatic Enantioselective Intermolecular Radical Hydroalkylation.†Nature, 584, 69–74 (2020). - B. Wang, F. Guo, C. Huang, and H. Zhao. “Unraveling the Iterative Type I Polyketide Synthases Hidden in Streptomyces.†Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 117, 8449-8454 (2020).
- Y. Yu, Y. Guo, Q. Tian, H. Yeh, Y. Lan, M. Zhang, I. Tasan, S. Jain, and H. Zhao. “An Efficient Gene Knock-in Strategy Using 5’-Modified Double-stranded DNA Donors with Short Homology Arms.†Nature Chemical Biology, 16, 387–390 (2020).
- J. Lian, C. Shultz, M. Cao, M. HamediRad, and H. Zhao. “Multi-functional Genome-wide CRISPR System for High Throughput Genotype-Phenotype Mapping.†Nature Communications, 10:5794 (2019).
- M. HamediRad, R. Chao, S. Weisberg, J. Lian, S. Sinha, and H. Zhao. “Towards a Fully-Automated Algorithm-Driven Platform for Biosystems Design.†Nature Communications, 10:5150 (2019).
- B. Wang, F. Guo, S. H. Dong, and H. Zhao. “Activation of Silent Biosynthetic Gene Clusters Using Transcription Factor Decoys.†Nature Chemical Biology, 15, 111–114 (2019).
- T. Si, Q. Tian, Y. Min, L. Zhang, J. V. Sweedler, W. A. van der Donk, and H. Zhao. “Rapid Structure-activity Screening of Lanthipeptide Analogs via In-colony Removal of Leader Peptides in Escherichia coli.†Journal of the American Chemical Society, 140, 11884-11888 (2018).
- Z. Litman, Y. Wang, H. Zhao, and J. F. Hartwig. “Cooperative Asymmetric Reactions Combining Photocatalysis and Enzymatic Catalysis.†Nature, 560, 355-359 (2018).
- Z. Bao, M. HamediRad, P. Xue, H. Xiao, I. Tasan, R. Chao, J. Liang, and H. Zhao. “Genome-scale Engineering of Saccharomyces cerevisiae with Single Nucleotide Precision.†Nature Biotechnology, 36, 505–508 (2018).
- J. Liang, Y. Luo, and H. Zhao. “Synthetic Biology: Put Synthesis in Biology.” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Systems Biology and Medicine, 3, 7-20 (2011).
