Prof. Zhou is a Professor in Key Laboratory of Synthetic Biology, Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Zhou obtained a Ph.D. in Molecular Ecology from the University of Tokyo, Japan, where she develop several molecular tools used for investigation of fungal population genetics ; she got her postdoctoral training in the University of Tokyo sponsored by JSPS (Japanese Society for Promotion of Sciences), where she worked on molecular ecology of ectomycorrhizal fungi.