Dr. Yongrong Zhang is a Research Assistant Professor at University of Maryland Baltimore (UMB) in the field of microbial pathogenesis. She received her Ph.D. degree in Biochemical Engineering at East China University of Science and Technology in China in 2013 where she investigated the cytokine-based immunotherapies against multidrug resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection. Meanwhile, she also started to focusing on the studies of the domain functions of the Clostridioides difficile toxins at Tufts University in the United States as a visiting student from 2008-2010.

After she completed her PhD study, she joined in Dr. Hanping Feng’s lab at UMB for postdoctoral training in 2013. She continued her research on investigating the pathogenesis of C. difficile infection (CDI) and the development of antibody-based immunotherapies against CDI. Her work has made significant original contributions to the C. difficile field, including understanding the molecular mechanism of C. difficile toxins, establishing several widely-used animal models and developing efficient vaccines and therapeutic antibodies.

In 2021, she started her appointment as a Research Assistant Professor at the Department of Microbial Pathogenesis in Dental School of UMB and continues her research on infectious diseases.