Professor Zhang achieved his bachelor’s degree in mineral processing, and his doctor's degree, majoring in steel metallurgical engineering, from Central South University. He now works as a vice-dean at the School of Minerals Processing & Bioengineering. He became a member of TMS in 2011 and is a member of Pyrometallurgy Committee and Materials Characterization Academic Comittee. His main research interests include: agglomeration of iron and its direct reduction, complex ore and secondary resource value-added processing, metallurgical and environment engineering, etc. He undertook twelve projects at the provincial and ministerial level or above, including National Science Foundation of China, National science and technology support project corpus, Major science and technology project of Hunan province corpus, etc.. He has held over 20 research projects for the international and university/industry cooperation, and authorized 55 national invention patents. He has published over 80 academic papers, and over 50 of these papers were published in international journals, such as Hydrometallurgy, Powder Technology, JOM, International Journal of Mineral Processing, ISIJ International, Journal of Hazardous Materials, Minerals Engineering, Mineral Processing, etc., Over 80 papers are recorded in SCI and EI.