Jianhua Zhang came to the United States via CUSBEA, a China-U.S. exchange program, in 1985. Dr. Zhang received his PhD from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas in 1991. He completed a postdoc at  the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research (MIT) in 1995. He then served as research assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine from 1996 to 2005. Dr. Zhang's research interests include molecular and cellular mechanisms of neuronal cell death, Parkinson's disease and dopaminergic cell death, neuroprotection mechanisms, protein clearance mechanisms, genetic models for neuron death and neurodegenerative diseases.