MIE’s Xiaoyu Zhang Earns Prestigious Princeton Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship

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Doctoral candidate Xiaoyu Zhang from Professor Jinglei Ping’s group in the UMass Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (MIE) Department has received a career-changing Princeton Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Princeton Bioengineering Institute - Innovators (PBI2).

As one of only two new Princeton PBI2 Fellows in the 2024 cohort, Zhang receives an appointment that includes a salary and research budget of nearly $100,000 per year. Zhang will use the esteemed fellowship to do pioneering research on a new approach for understanding the relationship between environmental factors and cellular functions. Such understanding is critical in fields ranging from cell biology and developmental biology to cardiology and neuroscience.

As Zhang explains the backstory for his research project in Princeton, “Cell functions and behaviors are highly dependent on their microenvironment. Modulating this microenvironment, while simultaneously monitoring cellular responses to these changes, is crucial for understanding the relationship between environmental factors and cellular functions.

The Princeton program’s website explains that “This opportunity is intended to foster community and collaborative work within the Omenn-Darling Bioengineering Institute (ODBI) at Princeton University. PBI2 fellows will work with two or more Princeton faculty to establish an interdisciplinary research plan for bioengineering projects to be performed as part of the growing ODBI community.” 

Among the many perks of the Princeton program, Zhang will benefit from traditional postdoctoral training, enhanced by the opportunity for dual mentorship across different labs and disciplines. He will also gain experience in guiding his own new research directions, paving the way for an independent research career.

Zhang’s research interests and achievements are well-suited to the interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary nature of the fellowship. His work in Ping’s lab, which spans from nanomechanoelectrical DNA detection to dynamic cell control, has been published in highly ranked journals, including Nature Communications and PNAS. (May 2024)