Guoyan Zhao, PhD

Guoyan Zhao, PhD, is an assistant professor with dual appointment in the Department of Genetics and the Department of Neurology at Washington University School of Medicine. Dr. Zhao earned a bachelor’s degree from Peking University in China in 1995. She received her Ph.D. in 2003 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in 2007, both in the Department of Genetics at Washington University School of Medicine. Dr. Zhao joined the faculty in 2023, returning to the Department of Genetics.

Dr. Zhao leads a team consisting of talented researchers from multiple countries with diverse racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and cultural backgrounds. Her laboratory integrates multiple cutting-edge computational and experimental approaches to study gene transcriptional regulation in the nervous system and how changes in the regulation contribute to neurological and neurodegenerative diseases. She has published over seventy scientific papers and served on multiple NIH study sections as the Chair, Vice Chair, or ad hoc reviewers. She is currently the Director of the Gary D. Stormo Computational & Systems Biology Fellowship Program in the Department of Genetics and a member of the Committee on Admissions for the medical school.