Zhirong Bao

Bao Zhirong is a world-leading computational biologist who returned to China in 2026 after 30 years in the United States. He joined Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in Shenzhen as a Chair Professor in the School of Life Sciences, after spending 17 years at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, where he rose from Assistant Member to Full Member.

Bao is best known for pioneering in toto imaging technologies that allow scientists to track individual cells in real time as organs form and diseases emerge. His lab developed AceTree, a widely-used cell-tracking software that has become a critical tool in developmental biology. He was awarded the Basil O'Connor Starter Scholar Award and the prestigious NIH Director's Transformative Research Award.

At SUSTech, his research focuses on how brain circuits mature and begin to function, studying how movement, perception, and cognition emerge in early life, and how these processes may differ in conditions such as autism. He is also researching the perinatal transition — the biological shift around birth when newborns adapt from reliance on the mother to independent function.