Zheng Cui’s research focuses on microbial enzymes and metabolites.
Research Interests
The Cui Lab integrates comprehensive multi-omics datasets with AI-driven computational biology to discover and investigate health-relevant microbial metabolites, enzymes, and biosynthetic gene clusters in the human microbiome. In parallel, the lab applies the insight into microbial biochemistry to design and engineer therapies and biocatalysis platforms, translating fundamental discoveries into therapeutic and biocatalytic applications.
Biography
Zheng received her PhD from the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy. Her doctoral work with Dr. Steven Van Lanen focused on discovering new nucleoside antibiotics and elucidating their biosynthetic pathways in Streptomyces, a genus of soil bacteria. Before her doctoral studies, she earned an MS in Pharmaceutics from Peking University College of Pharmacy, where she characterized polymer-based drug delivery systems for cancer therapy in vitro and in vivo. As a postdoctoral researcher with Dr. Emily Balskus at Harvard University, she integrated computational, biochemical, and omics approaches to discover new microbial natural products and enzymes from the human gut microbiome and from human pathogens. Her postdoctoral work was supported in part by an NIH F32 fellowship. During her postdoctoral training, she also completed an online MS in Computer Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology, specializing in Artificial Intelligence (formerly Interactive Intelligence).
Education
Master's Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology (2024)
Ph.D. Pharmaceutical Science, University of Kentucky (2018)
Master's Pharmaceutics, Peking University (2012)
Bachelor's Pharmaceutical Science, China Pharmaceutical University (2009)