Dr. Zhang is Dean and Glassell Family Foundation Distinguished Chair in Informatics Excellence at the School of Biomedical Informatics at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).

He is also the Director of the National Center for Cognitive Informatics and Decision Making in Healthcare (SHAPRC), which was funded by a $15 million contract from the Office of National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) under the SHARP program to lead the national effort on EHR and Health IT usability, workflow, and cognitive support. He has more than 30 years of research, education, product development, consulting, and management experience in biomedical informatics, cognitive science, usability, patient safety, decision making, and biomedical big data. He has authored more than 170 publications and has been the principal investigator or co-investigator on numerous grants (including $35 million as PI).

He has graduated more than twenty-five PhD students and more than seventy master’s students. Dr. Zhang was a recipient of John P. McGovern Outstanding Teacher Award, a recipient of the George H. W. Bush Award from the Asian Pacific American Heritage Association, and an elected Fellow of American College of Medical Informatics. Dr. Zhang received his PhD in cognitive science from the University of California at San Diego and his BS in biological sciences from the University of Science and Technology of China.