Zhong selected as a 2012 Sloan Fellow

Sheng Zhong, an associate professor of bioengineering, is one of three University of Illinois professors selected to receive a 2012 Sloan Research Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. 

With his research team, Zhong studies causal relationships among gene regulation, cell differentiation and cancer. His lab pioneered in systems biology modeling, stem-cell engineering and single-cell technologies. He made important discoveries on the genetic differences of early embryonic development among humans, mice and cows. His work directly contributed to open the field of “comparative epigenomics”--using cross-species epigenomic comparison to annotate the genomes.

Zhong is also a professor of biophysics and neuroscience and affiliated with the departments of computer science, statistics, and cell and developmental biology; the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology; the Institute for Genomic Biology; and the National Center for Supercomputer Applications. He earned his PhD in biostatistics, with a minor in molecular biology, from Harvard University in 2005. 

Illinois faculty members Neal K. Dalal, astronomy, Vera Mikyoung Hur, mathematics, and Sheng Zhong are among the126 early career scientists and researchers from 51 colleges and universities chosen for a two-year fellowship. In keeping with its goal of recognizing potential groundbreaking researchers in their respective fields, the Sloan fellowship program awards fellows $50,000 to pursue their choice of research topics and allows them flexibility in applying funds toward their research. Sloan research fellowships have been awarded since 1955.
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Contact: Sheng Zhong, Department of Bioengineering, 217/265-6589.

Writer: Liz Ahlberg, physical sciences editor, U of I News Bureau, 217/244-1073.

Cailun Gangi, a student intern in the News Bureau, contributed to this story.

If you have any questions about the College of Engineering, or other story ideas, contact Rick Kubetz, editor, Engineering Communications Office, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 217/244-7716.