Professor
University of Maryland School of Medicine
USA
Dr. Zhe Han is a geneticist and developmental biologist in the United States. He is a tenured Professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) and the founding director of its Center for Precision Disease Modeling. Dr. Han earned his B.Sc. from Peking University in 1996 and his Ph.D. in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology from the University of Michigan in 2002. After postdoctoral training at UT Southwestern, he established his independent lab at the University of Michigan Medical School in 2006. Over the past two decades, Dr. Han has advanced Drosophila as a model for heart, kidney, muscle, blood, and metabolic diseases. He has published over 80 high-impact papers, mentored 40+ trainees, and secured multiple NIH grants. Dr. Han pioneered the "gene replacement" approach, introducing human patient alleles into Drosophila to replace endogenous genes, uncovering disease mechanisms, and enabling mechanism-based therapy development. By bridging genetic discovery and clinical application, this approach offers a powerful platform for translational genetics, with the potential to improve millions of lives.