Yan Zheng received her B.S. and M.S. degrees from Tianjin University in 1995 and 1998, respectively, and completed her Ph.D. under the supervision of Professor Xian-He Bu at Nankai University in 2003. She started her career in Organic Chemistry teaching and researching in the Department of Chemistry at Tianjin  University since 1998, and was promoted to associated professor in 2004. She worked with Prof. Yong Gao at SIUC from 2005 to 2006 and Prof. Dominique Cahard at CNRS in 2016, respectively, focused on design and synthesis of organocatalysts and biomimetic nanocatalysts for catalytic organic reactions. She also worked with Prof. Coppola at University of Michigan from 2010 to 2011, majored in Chemical Education. Now she is working with Prof. Jun-An Ma on asymmetric reactions catalyzed by organocatalysts and nanocatalysts.