Jixun Zhan

College of Engineering

Biological Engineering

Dr. Jixun Zhan received a Ph.D. in biochemical engineering at East China University of Science and Technology in 2003, and conducted his postdoctoral research at the University of Arizona and UCLA. In 2008, Dr. Zhan joined the Department of Biological Engineering at USU as an assistant professor and has been working on natural product biosynthesis and metabolic engineering since then. He was promoted to associate professor in 2013 and full professor in 2017. Dr. Zhan has published 5 book chapters and 89 peer-reviewed papers in leading journals such as Nature Communications, JACS, and PNAS. His invention of the production of a natural blue dye led to a U.S. patent and this blue dye biosynthetic technology was selected by Textile Today as one of the top ten latest technologies introduced in textile in 2016. His research is well supported by various funding agencies such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Department of Defense (DOD), American Heart Association (AHA) and USTAR. He was a recipient of the AHA National Scientist Development Grant in 2009 and one of the two awardees of the 2010 DOD Genetic Studies of Food Allergies Research Program Concept Award. Dr. Zhan was named the outstanding researcher of the Department of Biological engineering in 2011-2015 and 2017.