Dr Zhao’s research projects have broad applications; therefore, he is also a member of the Departments of Biomedical Engineering, Biological Chemistry, the Sue and Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center, Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, Edwards Lifesciences Center for Advanced Cardiovascular Technology. His expertise is in generating rapid diagnostics, including a high throughput microarray instrument for COVID-19 diagnosis (in collaboration with Dr. Philip Felgner). Dr. Zhao has trained 10 pre-doctoral students, including 6 students who have graduated. He is also collaborating with Kai Kessenbrock to develop single-cell spatial-omics technology that will enable rapid, high-throughput spatial multi-omics profiling to characterize the immune tumor microenvironment. One of Dr. Zhao’s current students, Joshua Gu, received the award in 2020 training grant funds from the School of Graduate Studies (T32 matching funds), which is split with Justice Williams in the Kessenbrock lab (6 months support each).