Jizhong Zhou

Jizhong Zhou (Chinese: 周集中) is an internationally renowned microbial ecologist and member of the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Academia Europaea. Dr. Zhou is a George Lynn Cross Research Professor and Presidential Professor in the School of Biological Sciences, Director of the Institute for Environmental Genomics, and an Adjunct Professor at School of Civil Engineering, Environmental Sciences, and the School of Computer Sciences, University of Oklahoma. He is also an Adjunct Senior Scientist at Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Education

1996-1997, Postdoc, Microbial ecology, Alexander Hollaender Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow, Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Mentor: Anthony V. Palumbo) 1993-1995, Postdoc, Microbial ecology, Center for Microbial Ecology, Michigan State University (Advisor: James M. Tiedje) 1990-1993, Ph.D., Molecular Biology, Washington State University (Advisor: Prof. Andris Kleinhofs) 2024, Inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award from University of Oklahoma - The university's highest academic honor, recognizing exceptional and innovative research with broad societal impact 2022, ISME-IWA BioCluster Grand Prize Award - Jointly awarded by the International Society for Microbial Ecology and International Water Association for interdisciplinary research bridging microbial ecology and water treatment technologies 2022, SSSA Award for soil sciences - Recognizes significant advances in soil science research 2019, ASM Award for Environmental Research - Honors outstanding achievements in environmental microbiology and microbial ecology research 2015, DOE’s Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award - The U.S. Department of Energy's highest scientific honor, awarded for exceptional contributions to research 2009, R&D 100 Award - Recognized by R&D Magazine for developing GeoChip, selected as one of the year's 100 most significant technological innovations 2001, Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) - The highest U.S. government honor for early-career scientists and engineers, awarded by the White House 1996, Alexander Hollaender Distinguished Postdoctoral Award - Established by the U.S. Department of Energy as one of America's most prestigious postdoctoral honors.

Major honors

2025, Member of the National Academy of Sciences 2021, Among the 2021 Reuters List of World's Top 1000 Climate Scientists 2020, Fellow of the International Water Association. 2018-present, top 0.1% highly Cited Researcher in both fields of Microbiology, and Environment & Ecology by Web of Science. Only 6% of the highly cited researchers appear in > two fields 2019-present, World's most cited researcher (top 0.05%) across all science & engineering fields Most highly cited researcher (H-index > 100) according to their Google Scholar Citations 2018, Fellow of the Ecological Society of America 2014, George Lynn Cross Research Professor 2008, Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science 2007-present, Honorary Director, Chinese Association of Microbial Ecology (CAME) 2005, Fellow of American Academy of Microbiology

Awards established

Cindy and Jizhong Zhou Graduate Student/Post-doctorate Travel Award in Environmental Science and Technology Based at the University of Oklahoma, this award supports graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in environmental science and technology for conference travel and research exchanges.

Jizhong Zhou Award on Microbial Ecology for Outstanding Middle Career Microbial Ecologists Established in 2017 by the Chinese Society for Microbial Ecology (CSME), this award honors outstanding mid-career researchers in microbial ecology.

Journal editor

2021-Present, Co Editor-in-Chief, mLife 2019-Present, Associate Editor for Microbiome/Environmental Microbiome 2017-2023, Senior Editor, ISME Journal 2014-2020, Section Editor, Microbial Ecology and Evolution, BMC Microbiology 2009-2019, Senior Editor, mBio, ASM flagship journal 2003-2013, Editor, Applied and Environmental Microbiology

Selected publications

Climate Change Biology Tao et al. 2024. Climate warming accelerates positive soil priming in a temperate grassland ecosystem. Nature Communications, 15:1178 Zhang et al. 2023. Experimental Warming Leads to Convergent Succession of Grassland Archaeal Community. Nature Climate Change, 13, 561–569 Wu et al. 2022. Reduction of microbial diversity in grassland soil is driven by long-term climate warming. Nature Microbiology. 7, 1054–1062. (top 1% highly cited hot paper) Yuan et al. 2021. Climate Warming Enhances Microbial Network Complexity and Stability. Nature Climate Change, 11:343-348. (top 1% highly cited) Gao et al. 2020. Stimulation of soil respiration by elevated CO2 is enhanced under nitrogen limitation in a decade-long grassland study. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., 117: 33317-33324 Guo et al. 2020. Gene-informed decomposition model predicts lower soil carbon loss due to persistent microbial adaptation to warming. Nature Communications. 11, 4897. doi:10.1038/s41467-020-18706-z Guo et al. 2019. Climate warming accelerates temporal scaling of grassland soil microbial biodiversity. Nature Ecol & Evol., 3, 612–61 Guo et al. 2018. Climate Warming Leads to Divergent Succession of Grassland Microbial Communities. Nature Climate Change. 8:813-818 (top 1% highly cited) Xue et al. 2016. Tundra soil carbon is vulnerable to rapid microbial decomposition under climate warming. Nature Climate Change, 6: 595-600 (was top 1% highly cited) Zhou et al. 2012. Microbial Mediation of Carbon Cycle Feedbacks to Climate Warming. Nature Climate Change, 2:106-110. (top 1% highly cited) Deysh et al. 1998. Isolation of acidophilic methane-oxidizing bacteria from northern peat wetlands. Science, 282: 281-284 Environmental remediation Wu, et al. 2019. Global diversity and biogeography of bacterial communities in wastewater treatment plants. Nature Microbiology, 4:1183–1195. (top 1% highly cited) Zhou et al. 2014. Stochasticity, Succession and Environmental Perturbations in a Fluidic Ecosystem. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., 111: E836-E845. (top 1% highly cited) Hazen et al. 2010. Deep-sea oil plume enriches Indigenous oil-degrading bacteria. Science, 330: 204-208. (top 1% highly cited) Xu et al. 2010. Responses of microbial community functional structures to pilot-scale uranium in situ bioremediation. ISME J, 4:1060-1070 Liu et al. 2003. Transcriptome dynamics of Deinococcus radiodurans recovering from ionizing radiation. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci, 100: 4191-4196 Liu et al. 1997. Thermophilic Fe(III)-reducing bacteria from the deep subsurface: The evolutionary implications. Science 277: 1106-1109 Theoretical Ecology Ning et al. 2024. Environmental stress mediates groundwater microbial community assembly. Nature Microbiology, 9:490-501. (Top 0.1% highly cited hot paper) Buzzard et al. 2019. Continental scale structuring of forest and soil diversity via functional traits. Nature Ecol. & Evol., 3, 1298–1308 Zhou and Ning. 2017. Stochastic Community Assembly: Does It Matter in Microbial Ecology? Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews, 81:e00002-17 (top 1% highly cited) Zhou et al. 2016. Temperature mediates continental-scale diversity of microbes in forest soils. Nature Communication, 7:12083, doi:10.1038/ncomms12083 (top 1% highly cited) Zhou et al. 2013. Stochastic assembly leads to alternative communities with distinct functions. mBio, 4: e00584-12 Zhou et al. 2008. Spatial Scaling of Functional Gene Diversity across Various Microbial Taxa. Proc Nat. Acad. Sci. 105: 7768-7773 Zhou et al. 2002. Spatial and resource factors influencing high soil microbial diversity. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 68: 326-334 Experimental genomic technologies Zhou et al. 2015. High-Throughput Metagenomic Technologies for Complex Microbial Community Analysis: Open and Closed Formats. mBio 6:e02288-14 (top 1% highly cited) Zhou et al. 2011. Reproducibility and Quantitation of Amplicon Sequencing-Based Detection. ISME J, 5:1303-1313 (top 1% highly cited) Zhou et al. 2013. Random Sampling Process Leads to Overestimation of β-Diversity of Microbial Communities. mBio 4: e00324-13. He et al. 2007. GeoChip: A comprehensive microarray for investigating biogeochemical, ecological, and environmental processes. ISME J, 1: 67-77 (Among the 5 top-cited papers for the first 10 years of ISME J) Zhou et al. 1996. DNA recovery from soils of diverse composition. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 62: 316-322 (>3,900 citations) (Among the 20 most cited papers in AEM history, since 2008) Computational genomic technologies Xiao, et al. 2022. Disentangling Direct from Indirect Relationships in Association Networks. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., 119 No. 2 e2109995119. (top 1% highly cited) Ning et al. 2020. A quantitative framework reveals ecological drivers of grassland soil microbial community assembly in response to warming. Nature Communication, 11:4717. (top 1% highly cited) Ning et al. 2019. A General Framework for Quantitatively Assessing Ecological Stochasticity. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., 116: 16893-16898. (top 1% highly cited) Deng et al. 2016. Network succession reveals the importance of competition in response to emulsified vegetable oil amendment for uranium bioremediation. Environ. Microbiol., 18: 205-218; (top 1% highly cited) Deng et al. 2012. Molecular Ecological Network Analyses. BMC Bioinformatics, 13:113 (top 1% highly cited) Zhou et al. 2011. Phylogenetic molecular ecological network of soil microbial communities in response to elevated CO2. mBio 2: e00122-11. (top 1% highly cited) Zhou et al. 2010. Functional Molecular Ecological Networks. mBio 1:e00169-10