Cheng Zou received her PhD in plant molecular biology in Peking University, China. She did her postdoctoral studies at Michigan State University (MSU) with professor Shinhan Shiu, working on the evolution of gene regulation. During her time at MSU, Cheng also completed a masters’ degree in Statistics. She joined the Bioinformatics Facility in January 2018 and began working as a research associate with Qi Sun on bioinformatics analysis assisting molecular breeding.