Jianzhong He is an associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the National University of Singapore. She received her PhD from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2003. Before moving to USA, she obtained her Master and Bachelor degrees from Tsinghua University and Harbin Institute of Technology in 1998 and 1995, respectively. She was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California Berkeley for two years before joining the National University of Singapore as an assistant professor in 2005.

Jianzhong’s research focuses on discovering novel microorganisms to transform and detoxify environmental contaminants, enhancing biodegradation by optimising the growth of functional microbes, applying nucleic acid-based approach in laboratory cultures and in situ, converting biomass to biofuels and value-added biochemicals, and environmental application of genomics. She has been actively involved in research focusing on emerging environmental contaminants polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), the widespread chlorinated solvents, anammox microorganisms for nutrient removal, biomass to butanol and ethanol.

During her tenure at NUS, Jianzhong has generated 67 peer-reviewed publications while securing significant amount of external funding from diverse funding agencies. So far, her publications have been cited more than 2100 and an H-Index of 20 (based on web of Science) and cited for 3775 and an H-Index of 26 (based on Google Scholar). Among the publications, the paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) published in year 2014 and the paper in Nature published in year 2003 highlight the impact of her work. She holds several patents and collaborates widely with industrial, governmental and scientific partners. She is also the editorial board member of the ISME Journal, Applied and Environmental Microbiology, and Journal of Scientific Reports.