Senior Investigator
Dr. Zhou earned his bachelor’s degree in biology and his master’s and doctoral degrees in biophysics from Waseda University (Tokyo, Japan), which he attended from 1994 to 2001. He was a recipient of a Japanese Government Scholarship for his PhD study. Dr. Zhou completed postdoctoral training in developmental neurobiology at the University of California, San Francisco in 2005. He then joined the faculty at the University of California at Davis, School of Medicine, from October 2005 to March 2024. During his career at UC Davis, Dr. Zhou was a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, and a Senior Investigator at the Institute for Pediatric Regenerative Medicine, co-founded by Shriners Hospitals for Children. Dr. Zhou relocated from California to Massachusetts and officially joined the ADA Forsyth Institute as a Senior Investigator as of April 2024.
Dr. Zhou directs a research laboratory to study the role of morphogenetic Wnt signaling and epigenetic regulators in birth defects, organogenesis, and tissue-specific stem cells using genetically modified mutant mice as the model system, combined with a wide range of molecular, cellular, embryological, and single-cell genomic approaches. The Zhou lab has made a significant finding that genetic inactivation of canonical Wnt signaling is a sufficient condition to cause tissue closure birth defects, including orofacial clefts and neural tube defects, which may provide a basis for future translational studies of these severe and common structural birth defects in human newborns.
Dr. Zhou is a recipient of the UC Davis Health System Research Award. His research has been supported by NIH, Shriners Hospitals for Children, and other foundation grants. Dr. Zhou is a peer reviewer for more than 30 major scientific journals and an editorial board member for some journals including iScience. Dr. Zhou is also a grant reviewer for several major grant foundations throughout the world, including NIH, UK Medical Research Council, and Hong Kong Research Grants Council. He currently serves as a standing member for the Pregnancy and Neonatology study section at NIH.
