Zhou Xiang received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Wuhan University in 1986 and 1989, respectively. In 1996 he earned his Ph.D. from The Chinese University of Hong Kong and furthered his postdoctoral research at the University of Virginia and the University of Maryland in the USA from 1996 to 2001. He has been a professor at Wuhan University since 2001 and is currently the deputy director of the Third Session Academic Committee of Wuhan University. He was elected as an Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in November 2021.

Zhou’s research focuses on the chemical biology of nucleic acids, and his main interests include the identification and regulation of small molecules on nucleic acid structure, and applications in disease control, diagnosis and treatment based on nucleic acid chemistry technology. He has obtained systematic and internationally influential innovative results in the development of nucleic acid targeting drug molecules and major disease diagnostic technologies through the identification and regulation of small molecules on nucleic acid structures. He has published more than 260 papers as corresponding or co-corresponding author in journals like Acc. Chem. Res., Chem. Soc. Rev., Nat. Chem. Biol., Nat.Commun., Sci. Adv.,Chem, J. Am. Chem. Soc., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., Nucleic Acid Res., JACS Au, and Cell Chem. Biol.. He also won the first prize of the Hubei Natural Science Award twice and the second prize of the WuXi AppTec Life Chemistry Research Award.

He once presided over the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars program, the Innovative Research Groups program and the 973 Program. He was selected as a candidate for National“Hundred, Thousand and Ten Thousand Talents Project”, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and served as the director of the Chemical Biology Specialty Committee of the Chinese Chemical Society. He also serves on the editorial board of several academic journals, such as Acc.Chem.Res..