Jizhong Zhou

Zhou’s research seeks to advance microbial ecology and genomics by integrating experimental technologies, ecological theory, and computational approaches to better understand microbiome roles in ecological processes under changing environmental conditions. His research involves the development of high-quality nucleic acid extraction methods, sequencing- and chip-based microbial detections, and computational approaches for network analysis and community assembly inference. He is also developing novel strategies and conceptual frameworks for omics-enabled ecosystem modeling and simulation. Using these tools, his research has gained critical insights into microbial feedbacks to climate warming and underscored the significance of stochastic processes in shaping microbiome diversity, structure, and functions in soils, groundwater, and engineered environments. Ongoing efforts include advancing tools to study microbial interactions and assembly mechanisms; improving predictive, system-level understanding of microbially driven biogeochemical processes under global change and environmental pollution; searching for generalizable patterns and principles in microbial ecology; and developing artificial intelligence–enabled, microbial functional traits-based ecosystem models to forecast ecosystem dynamics and functions. Collectively, this research aims to inform biodiversity conservation and ecosystem management, advance climate change science and mitigation, and support long-term environmental sustainability.