Our research primarily focuses on the interface between biomaterials and biophysics, operating at the cellular and protein levels. We have a particular interest in designing and synthesizing bio-inspired, bio-functional, and bio-mimetic soft materials for applications in engineering and biomedicine. In addition to practical materials design, our objectives include gaining a deeper fundamental understanding of the sequence-structure-activity relationship of these materials. We achieve this through a combination of computational and experimental approaches. Currently, our research topics include:

• • Smart and tough hydrogels

  • Biofunctional polymers

  • Functional or disease-related proteins

  • Molecular simulations and machine learning of materials

• Award (05/2025): Dr. Ruth Nussinov was recently elected to the National Academy of Sciences. She served as an advisor to Dr. Jie Zheng at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). All of Dr. Zheng’s Ph.D. students involved in computational projects have completed summer internships in Dr. Nussinov’s lab, and continued there as postdoctoral researchers before advancing to their next positions.

• D day (04/2024): Congratulation to Dr. Yijing Tang

• Award (12/2023): Congratulations to Yijing Tang for receiving the Chemstress Award, the top honor for graduate students in the college. 

Yijing is the 9th recipient of this prestigious award within our laboratory.

• Highlight (10/2023): Dr. Zheng has achieved recognition on Stanford University's 2023 list of the World's Top 2% Scientists, appearing in both the career-long data and the single-year data for 2022.

Notably, he holds the top 1 ranking in the single-year data for 2022 at the University of Akron.

• Fellow (08/2023): Dr. Zheng was elected as a Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry.