Prospective Students

Thank you for your interest in joining my group at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. I will join SJTU as an Associate Professor in July 2026 and am currently recruiting PhD students starting in 2027.

Vision

My long-term goal is to build AI systems for drug discovery, from predictive models of biological systems, through computational screening and optimization, to clinical translation, closing the loop between simulation, experiment, and patient impact.

Research Directions

• AI for Drug Discovery. We develop AI methods that model how biological systems respond to perturbations and, crucially, that invert the mapping to design interventions.
• AI for Medicine. We build generalist medical foundation models, multimodal reasoning systems across imaging and clinical text, autonomous clinical decision support, and rigorous evaluation frameworks for medical AI.

Who I Am Looking For

I am looking for students who are excited about working at the interface of machine learning, biology, and medicine. Strong candidates from CS, EE, biomedical engineering, biology, or related backgrounds are all welcome. Prior experience with foundation models, single-cell/omics data, or computational biology is a plus but not required.

How to Apply

Please send me an email at xiaomanzhang.zxm [at] gmail.com with the subject line "Prospective PhD 2027, [Your Name]", and include:

• Your CV (with GPA and ranking, if available)
• A brief statement (1–2 paragraphs) of your research interests
• Representative papers, projects, or code (links are fine)
• Transcripts (unofficial is fine for the initial email)

Looking forward to hearing from you.

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