Kang Zhang

Born in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China, Zhang obtained his B.S. in Biochemistry from Sichuan University in Chengdu, China in 1984. In 1991, Zhang graduated with a Ph.D. in Genetics from Harvard University. Subsequently, Zhang obtained his M.D. from a Harvard University Medical School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology Joint M.D. Program with magna cum laude honors in 1995.^[11]

After completing an ophthalmology residency at the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins University, Zhang became assistant staff at the Cole Eye Institute at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. Zhang completed a retina fellowship at the University of Utah, and afterwards became an assistant professor at the University of Utah from 2002 to 2006.

In 2012, following an anonymous complaint, the UCSD Institutional Review Board (IRB) suspended enrollment in Zhang's research studies. After an internal review, the research was permitted to resume.^[12]

In 2013, Zhang, along with Trey Ideker, identified that the molecular aging clock could be measured by blood and tissues, and made use of epigenetic markers.^[13]

In 2014, Zhang, along with Yizhi Liu and Xiangdong Fu, investigated mechanisms and developed a new method of limbal stem cell repair and regeneration.^[8] Zhang has also pioneered the usage of artificial intelligence in diagnosing eye diseases.^[14]

In 2015, Zhang discovered that lanosterol can be used in eyedrop form to help prevent cataracts.^[7][15]

In 2017, the FDA issued a warning letter to Zhang citing violations in his oversight of human research studies and restricted him from serving as a principal investigator on such studies.^[4] The letter referenced issues dating back to 2012.^[16][3] Subsequently, a UCSD internal audit identified what it described as shortcomings in Zhang's research practices.^[5]

In 2019, a clinical trial in China involving Zhang prompted a letter from international doctors questioning its ethics and methodology.^[17] Around the same time, media reports noted his undisclosed ties to a Chinese ophthalmology company.^[18][6][4] UCSD placed Zhang on administrative leave; he later resigned. The university investigated his connections to Chinese entities. Zhang's lawyer said the leave and investigation stemmed from the 2017 FDA warning, not ties to China.^[19][6] Zhang had been affiliated with the Thousand Talents Plan, a Chinese recruitment program the FBI has scrutinized for counterintelligence risks.^[18][20] After leaving UCSD, he joined the Faculty of Medicine at Macau University of Science and Technology.^[21]

In 2019, Zhang was recruited to Macau University of Science and Technology to establish Macau's first medical school, where he became Vice-Dean for Research and Chair Professor in the Faculty of Medicine, as well as Director of the Macau Institute for AI in Medicine.^[22]

In 2021, Zhang and colleagues published a study in Nature Biomedical Engineering demonstrating that deep‑learning models could detect chronic kidney disease and type 2 diabetes from retinal fundus images, with potential applications in resource‑limited settings.^[23] In 2023, he was profiled in Cell Reports Medicine, where he described his work on multi‑modal artificial intelligence and was listed as a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher in Cross‑Field for 2019–2022.^[24] He was appointed Vice President of Macau University of Science and Technology in 2024.^[25] In 2026, he co‑authored a paper in npj Digital Medicine describing an AI model for personalized prediction of myopia progression in children.^[26][27]

Zhang and colleagues proposed and implemented MetaGP, a generative medical foundation model that integrates large-scale electronic health records with multimodal medical imaging, in 2025.^[28] Zhang, together with Jia Qu, also developed MINIM, a general-purpose large-scale generative synthetic medical image model, in 2025.^[29]

In 2026, Zhang, together with Shanshan Wang, developed AFLoc, a pathology vision–language model capable of lesion localization.^[30]

Some of Kang Zhang's selected awards are listed below.^[11]

• The Ophthalmologist World 100 Power List (2016, 2018)
• Fellow, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (2016)
• Fellow, Association of American Physicians (2011)
• Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science (2011)
• America's Top Ophthalmologists, Consumer's Research Council of America (2011)
• NIH Director's Transformative R01 Program (2010)
• Senior Investigator Award, Research to Prevent Blindness (2010)
• Outstanding Achievement Award, Chinese Ophthalmological Society (2009)
• Burroughs Wellcome Fund Clinical Scientist Award in Translational Research (2008)
• Lew R. Wasserman Merit Award, Research to Prevent Blindness (2006)
• Macular Society membership (2006)
• American Society of Clinical Investigation membership (2006)
• Macular Vision Research Award (2002)
• Ruth Steinbach Fund for Macular Degeneration (2001)
• Charles Schepens Award for Excellence in Retina Research (2001)
• Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions Clinician Scientist Award (1999)

Kang Zhang's professional affiliations are listed below.^[11]

• American Academy of Ophthalmology
• American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering
• American Association for the Advancement of Science
• American Society for Clinical Investigation
• American Society of Human Genetics
• Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology
• Association of American Physicians
• Macular Society