Zheng Wang, PhD

Zheng Wang is a Research Scientist at the Department of Biostatistics, Yale School of Public Health, Yale University. After completing a PhD at the Clark University in 2006, he held a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Iowa. He joined Yale University in 2007, and held a post-doctoral association position at the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department. He is an expert on fungal taxonomy, classification and systematics. He is one of the leading authors in the Assembling the Fungal Tree of Life project funded by NSF. His research is in the field of systematics, evolutionary biology, genetics and genomics, fungus-host associations and pathogenesis. His research involve field and laboratory experiments with model species and comparative genomics/transcriptomics to understand the effects of natural selection and evolution and development of sexual/asexual reproduction in fungi. In particular, it focuses on how fungi respond to environmental factors during different stages of their life history and how these are associated with evolution and development of pathogenesis in fungal pathogens. Current projects have been funded by NIH and NSF to investigate fungal attack via germination of asexual mitotic spores to various hosts, including human, insects, fungi and plants. He has served as a reviewer for more than 40 scientific journals, including all major mycological journals. He has held several editorial appointments, including associate editor of Mycosystema and Mycology, review editor of Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.