10.16.2015
New President-Elect of FAOBMB, Professor Zengyi Chang, will take office as of 1 January 2016.
Professor Zengyi Chang
Zengyi Chang was born in 1965 in China. In 1984, he graduated from the Department of Biology, EastChina Normal University (in Shanghai, China) and started postgraduate study first at the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He was then selected as a CUSBEA (China United States Biochemistry Examination and Application) fellow to pursue his Ph.D. studies at the Department of Biochemistry, Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, Texas, USA). In 1992, he received his Ph.D. in biochemistry at Baylor College of Medicine, and afterwards he did his postdoc training at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (1992-1995), where he started working on protein structure, function and mechanism (on such proteins as small heat shock proteins, adenosine deaminases, among others). In 1996, he became an associate Professor at the Department of Biological Sciences and Biotechnology, Tsinghua University (Beijing, China) and was promoted to full professorship in 1998. He moved to the School of Life Sciences at Peking University (in Beijing, China) in 2003 and stayed there since then, serving as the director of the Center for Protein Science(2005-present), vice dean of the School of Life Sciences (2007-2013).
His lab explores the roles and mechanisms of such proteins as molecular chaperones and proteases in the quality control of proteins under stress conditions or during their biogenesis (especially the beta-barrel outer membrane proteins and the ATP synthase) in living cells. His lab also tries to understand the molecular mechanism of dormancy (e.g., C elegans dauer and bacterial persisters). He has published more than 80 papers since becoming an independent PI in China.
He is currently serving as the President of the Chinese Protein Society (2011-2015), a vice president of the Chinese Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (2014-2018). He served as the Past-president of the Asia Pacific Protein Association (2011-2014). He was a major organizer for the 15th FAOBMB Conference (Oct. 21-24, 2000, Beijing, China) and 21st IUBMB & 12th FAOBMB Congress (Aug. 4-7, 2009, Shanghai, China). He was an invited speaker for the 10th FAOBMB Congress (Dec. 7-11, 2003, Bangalore, India) and the 15th IUBMB-24th FAOBMB Conference (Oct. 21-26, 2014, Chinese Taipei). He is currently delegate of the Chinese Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology to FAOBMB Council. Professor Chang will take up his position as President-Elect of FAOBMB as from 1 January 2016.
