Biosensors & Bioelectronics

Jixun Zhan

Jixun Zhan
Department of Biological Engineering
Utah State University ​​​​​​​, USA

Biography

Jixun Zhan received a PhD degree in Natural Products Chemistry and Biochemical Engineering (March 2003) from East China University of Science and Technology (Shanghai, China) and Peking University (Beijing, China). He was Postdoctoral Research Associate, Southwest Center for Natural Products Research (April 2003-August 2006) with College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona and Postdoctoral Scholar and Lecturer (August 2006-March 2008) with Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, California. Dr. Jixun Zhan then had successive appointments as Assistant (March 2008-July 2008) Professor at Department of Pediatrics, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York; Member (December 2009 – present) at Synthetic Bio-manufacturing Center, Utah State University, Logan, Utah and Assistant Professor (August 2008 – present) at Utah State University. His awards include American Heart Association Scientist Development Grant Award (2009), UCLA Chancellor’s Award for Postdoctoral Research Nominee (2008), Excellent Doctoral Dissertation Award of East China University of Science and Technology (2004). He has authored about 44 publications in high ranked journals and extensive citations, 2 book chapters, conferences.

Research Interest

His research interests focus on metabolic engineering and synthetic biology. Current research efforts lie in the interface of three areas: biology, chemistry, and engineering, including discovery and identification of bioactive natural products, biosynthetic mechanisms of pharmaceutically important compounds, characterization and development of biocatalysts for structural modification as well as improvement of useful enzymes using protein engineering approaches. He also works on combinatorial biosynthesis of novel biologically significant compounds for drug discovery.