ChBE professor Huimin Zhao was named to the World's Best Scientists 2026 list from Research.com, which recognizes researchers based largely on their publication and citation metrics. Zhao was specifically recognized for his contributions to biology and biochemistry disciplines.
His main research focuses on the development of an AI-powered self-driving biofoundry for protein engineering and cellular engineering. He has received numerous national and international honors for his contributions to education, bioengineering and synthetic biology.
Zhao is the director of three concurrent National Science Foundation research centers at the U. of I, including the Molecule Maker Lab Institute, the iBioFoundry and the Global Center for Biofoundry Applications. He has been on the faculty at Illinois since 2000, after earning his Ph.D. in chemistry from Caltech and working in industrial biotechnology at Dow Chemical. He also is an affiliate of the chemistry, biochemistry and bioengineering departments; the Center for Biophysics and Quantitative Biology; and The Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology.