Dr. Zhang is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at University of Central Florida College of Medicine. He received his PhD in Medical Science at Fudan University. His research is focused on studying molecular mechanisms of tumor initiation and progression in lung cancer. He was the first to discover that glycine decarboxylase is a metabolic oncogene that drives lung tumor-initiating cells and tumorigenesis through regulating pyrimidine metabolism. More recently, he investigated the reprogramming of metabolic pathways by aberrant noncoding RNAs regulation in lung cancer. He also uncovered mechanisms that mediate tolerance to small molecule inhibitors that are standard-of-care in the clinic. The goal is to decipher the complex mechanisms by which these pathways impact cancer initiation and progression, and to develop drugs that interfere with oncogenesis.