Guochang Zhang was a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Yong-Su Jin at the University of Illinois where he worked on Algal Mechanisms. His research is focused on the metabolic engineering of microorganisms to produce biofuels and chemicals from renewable biomass. For RIPE, he helped evaluate metabolic pathway designs using photosynthetic algae as a model. Guochang received his master’s degree in biochemical engineering from Tianjin University and then went on to earn his doctorate degree. He has also previously held a postdoctoral position at Illinois working on yeast metabolic engineering. His work has been published in several peer-reviewed journals, including Applied and Environmental Microbiology and Chemical Biology. He left the RIPE project to become a scientist at Amyris.