Dr. Zhou is a tenure-track Assistant Professor and Principal Investigator at Shenzhen University of Advanced Technology (SUAT), China. He obtained a B.S. degree in Biomedical Engineering and a Ph.D. degree in Neurobiology at Tsinghua University, Beijing, investigating the mechanisms of synaptic transmission and plasticity. After completing his first postdoctoral research at Tsinghua University (2013–2016), he continued his scientific career as a Postdoc at New York University (2016–2018) and Columbia University (2018–2020) in United States. He was subsequently promoted to the position of research faculty at Columbia University (2020–2023). Sincejoining the Faculty of Life and Health Sciences at SUAT in 2023, he has established his independent research laboratory.

Dr. Zhou has been leading multiple national, provincial, and municipal research projects, including the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) General Program (2025–2028), the Guangdong Natural Science Foundation General Program (2025–2027), the Guangdong Higher Education Innovative Research Program in Natural Sciences (2025), and the Shenzhen Basic Research Key Project (2024–2027).

Since 2018, Dr. Zhou has served as anad hocpeer reviewer for prestigious journals such asNature Communications,Molecular Psychiatry,Bioinformatics,Brain Research, andSLEEP Journal. He has been an editorial board member ofBrain Researchsince 2022. His work has been recognized through invited talks at major international conferences, including the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) Annual Meeting, Cold Spring Harbor Asia (CSH-Asia), the Chinese Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (CCCN), the International Conference on Neuron and Brain Diseases (ICNBD), and the China Conference on Brain Science and Photonics.

Dr. Zhou’s recent research has primarily centered around unraveling the mechanisms underlying the comorbidity between sleep disorders and chronic pain, developmental neurotoxicity of anesthesia, as well as synaptic configurations and their translation in constructing fundamental AI algorithms, with a focus on the circuitry, cellular, synaptic properties, and computational modeling. Recently, he published research articles as the first and/or corresponding author in scientific journals, includingNature Neuroscience(2023),Nature Communications(2024),British Journal of Anaesthesia(2021), andCommunications Biology(2024).

·2006, B.S. in Biomedical Engineering (BME) at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

·2013, Ph.D. in Neurobiology at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. 

·2013–2016, Postdoctoral Fellow and Research Assistant Professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.

·2016–2018, Postdoctoral Fellow at New York University, New York, United States.

·2018–2020, Postdoctoral Research Scientist at Columbia University, New York, United States.

·2020–2023, Associate Research Scientist (research faculty) at Columbia University, New York, United States.

·2023–present, Assistant Professor (tenure-track) and Principal Investigator (PI) at Shenzhen University of Advanced Technology (SUAT), Shenzhen, China

Selected publications

·Zhou, H.*, Bi, G.-Q., and Liu, G.* (2024) Intracellular magnesium optimizes transmission efficiency and plasticity of hippocampal synapses by reconfiguring their connectivity.Nature Communications 15, 3406. (* Corresponding author)

·Zhou, H., Neudecker, V., Perez-Zoghbi, J. F., Brambrink, A. M., and Yang, G. (2024) Volatile anesthetic-induced cerebral vasodilation is age-dependent and mediated by NG2+ pericytes. Communications Biology 7, 1519.

·Zhou, H., Li, M., Zhao, R., Sun, L., Yang, G. (2023). A sleep-active basalocortical pathway crucial for generation and maintenance of chronic pain. Nature Neuroscience 26, 458–469.

·Chen C., Sun L., Adler A., Zhou H., Zhang L., Zhang L., Deng J., Bai Y., Zhang J., Yang G., Tang P., and Gan, W.-B. (2023). Synchronized activity of sensory neurons initiates cortical synchrony in a model of neuropathic pain. Nature Communications 14, 689.

·Li, M., Zhou, H., Teng, S., Yang, G. (2022). Activation of VIP interneurons in the prefrontal cortex ameliorates neuropathic pain aversiveness. Cell Reports 40 (111333), 1-14.

·Sun, L., Tong, C. K., Morgenstern, T. J., Zhou, H., Yang, G., and Colecraft, H.M. (2022). Targeted ubiquitination of sensory neuron calcium channels reduces the development of neuropathic pain. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) 119 (20), e2118129119.

·Zhou, H., Xie, Z., Brambrink, A. M., and Yang, G. (2021). Behavioural impairments after early life propofol exposure are accompanied by reductions in neuronal activity in cortical circuitry. British Journal of Anaesthesia 126 (6), 1141-1156.

·Zhou, H. and Liu, G. (2015). Regulation of density of functional presynaptic terminals by local energy supply. Molecular Brain 8(42): 1-21.