Hong-Cai “Joe” Zhou obtained his Ph.D. in 2000 from Texas A&M University under the supervision of F. A. Cotton. After a postdoctoral stint at Harvard University with R. H. Holm, he joined the faculty of Miami University, Oxford, in 2002. He was promoted to a full professor within six years by working on the preparation and application of metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), a field he had had no prior experience in as a graduate student or postdoctoral fellow. He moved to Texas A&M University in 2008, was promoted to a Davidson Professor of Science in 2014, and was appointed the Robert A. Welch Chair in Chemistry in 2015. In June 2013, he started to serve as an associate editor for Inorganic Chemistry (ACS). In 2014, he received a JSPS Invitation Fellowship. In 2014, 2015, and 2016, he was listed as a Highly Cited Researcher by Thomson Reuters, and in 2016, he was elected a fellow of the AAAS, ACS, and RSC. In 2017, he was given the Distinguished Achievement award in research by TAMU's Association of Former Students.