Professor Liang Zhang currently serves as a Professor at China Pharmaceutical University and is a member of the Vaccine Professional Committee of the Chinese Society of Biotechnology. His research focuses on the design of nucleic acid-based drugs, including linear mRNA, circular mRNA, and small interfering RNA. He also specializes in predicting novel tumor antigens and developing algorithms for RNA structure analysis and prediction.

He is the co-first author and the principal developer of the mRNA vaccine design algorithm, LinearDesign, published in Nature. He recently developed a circular mRNA design algorithm called circDesign, which enhances circular mRNA's circularization efficiency, stability, and translatability.

Professor Zhang completed his undergraduate studies at Nankai University and obtained a master's from HKUST. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Oregon State University. Formerly, he worked at Baidu's Research Institute in the US, focusing on AI drug development. The mRNA COVID-19 vaccine (SW-BIC-213) that Dr. Zhang designed and developed in collaboration with StemiRNA received emergency use approval in Laos the year before last and just completed Phase III clinical trials last year.