Zengyi Shao

Zengyi Shao is the Hershel B. Whitney Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Iowa State University and affiliated with the NSF Center for Biorenewable Chemicals (CBiRC) and the DOE Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI). She has received the National Academies Keck Futures Initiative Award (2010), the Iowa Energy Center Impact Award (2016), the NSF CAREER Award (2018), the Bailey Research Career Development Award (2021), the NIH Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (2021), the Award for Mid-Career Achievement in Research at Iowa State University (2023), and the most recent Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) (2025). Shao earned a PhD in chemical and biomolecular engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2009.

The long-term goal of the Shao research group is to study the functional genomics of high-performing microbial species that have unique biochemical and biomedical potentials, develop platform strain-engineering technologies, and leverage these relatively simple and fast-growing testbeds to decipher critical steps in cellular commands, and eventually elucidate fundamental mechanisms in higher eukaryotes.