UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Xin Zhang, holder of the Paul Berg Early Career Professorship and assistant professor of chemistry and of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State, has been selected as a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences by The Pew Charitable Trusts, a national philanthropy organization based in Philadelphia. The award provides four years of funding to promising scientists whose research advances human health and addresses some of biomedicine’s most challenging questions.

Zhang is one of 22 early career researchers selected to receive the award in 2019 and one of nearly 1,000 scientists to have received the award since its founding in 1985. The award will support his work exploring how misfolded proteins form aggregates in cells and how to prevent aggregates from accumulating.

Zhang studies how stresses can alter the ways in which proteins fold in live cells. His laboratory develops chemical tools that allow researchers to visualize the folding states of proteins in intact live cells. His research also has application in the development of diagnoses and therapies for human diseases rooted in defective protein folding.

Zhang's previous awards and honors include the Sloan Research Fellowship in 2018, the Lloyd and Dottie Huck Early Career Award for 2015 to 2016, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface for 2014 to 2019, the American Chemical Society Nobel Laureate Signature Award for Graduate Education in Chemistry in 2012, and the Helen Hay Whitney Fellowship Award for 2011 to 2014. His research has been published in journals including Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Cell Reports, the Journal of the American Chemical Society, and Angewandet Chemie International Edition.

Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State, Zhang was a research associate at the Scripps Research Institute, California. He earned a doctoral degree at the California Institute of Technology in 2010, a master's degree at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2004, and a bachelor's degree at the University of Science and Technology of China in 2001.