Professor Xinguang Zhu is the Head of Plant Systems Biology Group at the CAS-MPG Partner Institute for Computational Biology. He received his doctorate from the University of Illinois and has work published in multiple publications, including Nature Biotechnology. Xinguang’s research explores new options to improve photosynthesis of major crops using state-of-the-art systems biology and synthetic biology approaches. Currently, he is developing new models and tools to support identification of new breeding or engineering targets to gain higher photosynthetic efficiency and correspondingly, higher productivity in major C3 food crops, and identifying critical regulators controlling the evolutionary and developmental processes of C4 photosynthesis. He is also working to understand how improved photosynthetic efficiency can be effectively converted into increased grain production in crops.