Dr. Yubin Zhou is a tenured Professor, Chancellor EDGES Fellow, Presidential Impact Fellow, and Director of the Center for Translational Cancer Research at the Institute of Biosciences and Technology, Texas A&M University. Dr. Zhou is also a primary faculty member in the Department of Translational Medical Sciences, a joint faculty member of the Department of Medical Physiology in the College of Medicine, and a joint faculty at the School of Engineering Medicine (EnMed) at Texas A&M University. Dr. Zhou received his medical training and internship in internal medicine (1998-2003) and earned his M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Chemistry and Bioinformatics (2008) from Georgia State University. He thereafter received his postdoctoral training in immunology at Harvard Medical School (2008-2010) and then worked as an instructor at La Jolla Institute for Immunology/UCSD (2010-2012). Dr. Zhou has received numerous distinctions, including the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) Fellow Award, LLS Special Fellow Award, and the LLS Translational Research Program Award. He is also a recipient of the TAMU Research Excellence Award, the NCI Innovative Research in Cancer Nanotechnology Award, and the ACS Research Scholar Award. Dr. Zhou was a Protégé member of the Texas Academy of Medicine, Engineering, Science & Technology (TAMEST) and is an elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (FAIMBE, 2023), the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC, 2025), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (FAAAS, 2026). In addition to his scientific achievements, he has served as an Associate Editor for Current Molecular Medicine and Pharmaceutical Science Advances, and currently sits on the editorial boards of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Chronic Diseases & Translational Medicine, and Clinical and Translational Medicine. He also co-edited a book entitled "Opsin-free Optogenetics: Technology and Applications". At Texas A&M University, Dr. Zhou leads a bioengineering and synthetic immunology lab focused on developing technologies that enable remote and programmable control of protein activity, cell physiology, and designer cells to benefit both basic and translational research. A tight integration among mechanistic studies, biomedical engineering, and translational sciences is a hallmark of Dr. Zhou’s research program (10+ patent applications and commercial licensing to biotech/pharma). Dr. Zhou has published over 170 publications in high impact journals (Nature Methods, Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Cell Biology, Nature Chemical Biology, Nature Genetics, Nature Aging, Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, Nature Communications, Science Advances, Molecular Cell, Cell Chemical Biology, Cancer Cell, Cell Genomics, Cancer Discovery, Advanced Science, JACS, Chemical Science etc.) with nearly 25,000 citations (among Stanford’s world's most-cited scientists list). His work has been featured on over a dozen journal covers and highlighted by multiple media outlets. He has also been invited to contribute to multiple authoritative reviews in the most discerning and well-respected journals, including Nature Reviews Bioengineering, Annual Review of Physiology, Physiological Reviews, Trends in Biotechnology, Trends in Pharmacological Sciences, Trends in Genetics, Current Opinion in Biotechnology, Current Opinion in Physiology, Current Opinion in Biomedical Engineering, and Seminars in Cancer Research. His research has been supported by over a dozen grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Welch Foundation, the John S. Dun Foundation, the Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (now Blood Cancer United), and the American Cancer Society. Dr. Zhou's lab has developed light-switchable calcium channels and their modulators (Nature Cell Biology 2015 & 2024; Nature Communications 2015, 2020, 2021, 2024 & 2025; eLife 2015; Angew Chem 2018; JACS 2020; Advanced Science 2021) and intelligent cell-based immunotherapy (Nature Chemical Biology 2021 & 2025; Nature Nanotechnology 2021). Microbial opsin-based optogenetics has been nothing short of revolutionary for the neuroscience field. Owing to the radical difference in the localization and excitability between immune cells and neurons, a parallel evolution of optogenetic tools tailored for the immune system requires totally different design principles. Dr. Zhou was among the first pioneers to combine opsin-free optogenetics, nanotechnology, and synthetic immunology to advance the creative concept of optogenetic immunotherapy. These elegant translational studies have been highlighted by STAT news, Nature series “News & Views”, NIGMS Biomedical Beat Blog, JACS Spotlights, Royal Society of Chemistry Editors’ Pick, KBTX channel, Clinical Leader, Photonics Media, Clinical Lab Products, BioTechniques, and BioPhotonics. His creative work has led to the invention of many powerful molecular tools with unprecedented spatiotemporal resolution to address important biomedical questions that are otherwise inaccessible to conventional techniques. From the translational perspective, his group has provided the first proof-of-concept for wireless optogenetic immunomodulation in living mammals, thereby establishing the rationale for future clinical trials of nano-optogenetic immunotherapy to benefit cancer patients.