Fengkai Zhang, M.D., M.Sc.

Staff Scientist

Contact: For contact information, search the NIH Enterprise Directory.

Education:

M.D., Beijing Medical University

M.Sc., University of Waterloo

B.S., University of Manitoba

Languages Spoken: Mandarin
Photo of Fengkai Zhang, M.D., M.Sc.

Biography

Fengkai Zhang is a Staff Scientist in the Computational Biology Section. He received his M.D. from Beijing Medical University, his B.S. in Computer Science and Statistics from the University of Manitoba, and his Master's degree in bioinformatics from the University of Waterloo. His post-doctoral work at Virginia Commonwealth University focused on SNPs in human and mouse. Following his training in bioinformatics analysis, he worked as research faculty for the PATRIC (Pathosystems Resource Integration Center) project in the NIAID Bioinformatics Research Center (BRC) at Virginia Tech.

Within the Computational Biology Section of the LISB/NIAID, Dr. Zhang is one of the main developers of the Simmune project. He developed the Simmune Modeler, created an iconographical language for rule-based modeling and tools for visualizing spatially resolved simulations. His recent work involves the development of approaches for analyzing model parameter space. He manages the build systems of the Simmune software suite across multiple operating systems including Linux, Mac OS, and Windows. Dr. Zhang also leads an international community effort in establishing and releasing the systems biology standard, SBML-multi (Systems Biology Markup Language Level 3 Package Specification for Multistate, Multicomponent and Multicompartment Species). He served as an SBML editor from 2017 to 2019. Outside the lab, he enjoys playing tennis and basketball and is an NFHS certified basketball official.