Prof. Cheng Zhu
Dr. Zhu is a Regents Professor of Biomedical Engineering and the J. Erskine Love, Jr. Endowed Chair in Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University. His Ph.D. and postdoctoral training with Richard Skalak at Columbia University and University of California, San Diego was on the mathematical modeling of cell locomotion and cell adhesion. But he has also become a self-taught experimentalist since 1990 after he built his lab at Georgia Tech. A resulting strength of Dr. Zhu’s work is integration of experiment, modeling and computation. He pioneered the analysis of interactions across the junctional interface between molecules anchored to two apposing surfaces by inventing the required experimental methods with custom-design instruments and developing the needed mathematical models. Armed by these powerful tools, the Zhu lab characterized the biophysical regulations of 2D binding and showed their biological relevance. Dr. Zhu is an internationally recognized leader in molecular biomechanics and mechanobiology. Using molecular dynamic simulations and force spectroscopy on cells, his lab conceptualized and demonstrated several types of mechanical regulation of protein unbinding and unfolding in a variety of receptor–ligand systems.