Zhenjiang (Zech) Xu is a research group leader at the State Key Laboratory of Food Science and Technology, Nanchang University, and a recipient of China’s National Overseas High-Level Young Talent Program. He earned his PhD in Biophysics from the University of Rochester Medical Center under the supervision of Professor David Mathews, and completed postdoctoral training and served as a project scientist with Professor Rob Knight at the University of California, San Diego. He later returned to China to establish an independent research group, where his work focuses on the interaction between gut microbiome and host, combining experimental animal models with bioinformatics approaches to explore precise interventions for regulating oral and gut microbial communities. He has published papers in leading journals such as Nature Computational Science, Microbiome, eLife, Genome Research, Advanced Science, and Gut Microbes, with over 46,000 citations and an H-index of 47. He has been recognized as a Clarivate Global Highly Cited Researcher and a Stanford/Elsevier World’s Top 2% Scientist. He leads projects funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and the Ministry of Science and Technology’s Key R&D Program, and serves as an editor and reviewer for journals including Microbiology Spectrum, Genome Biology, and Nature Communications.