Dr Youming Zhang is an Asmarley Lecturer/Assistant Professor in Respiratory Genomics and the Head of the Functional Genomics Group in the Section of Genomic & Environmental Medicine in the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London. He was trained as a physician at Tong Ji Medical University, China. He had further clinical and research training and obtained a master’s degree in medicine from Peking Union Medical College. He was awarded the K.C Wong scholarship and ORS from the University of Oxford, which allowed him to study a DPhil at the Oxford Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics. In 2006, Dr Zhang was appointed as a Research Council UK Fellow at Imperial College London. He published more than 50 papers in leading international genetics and respiratory journals with more than 2700 citations and an H-index of 18. He is an editorial member for AIMS Allergy and Immunology and the Chinese Medical Journal Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine. He also acts as a reviewer for many leading journals in the field. Dr Zhang focuses his work on the function of the novel genes in respiratory diseases. Recently, his group defined the functional roles of novel polymorphisms of asthma-related genes. The group applies state-of-the-art genomics approaches such as siRNA, gene overexpression, global gene expression profiling, RNA sequencing, ChIP sequencing and metabolite screening to dissect the pathways of the novel genes in disease pathophysiology. Dr Zhang has established ORMDL3 knockout and GSDMB knockout epithelial cell lines. The platforms provide powerful resources to dissect their functions for sphingolipid metabolism, cell stress, glycolysis, human rhinovirus infection and pyroptosis in inflammatory response. Dr Zhang is also interested in the roles of novel genes in the development of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). Dr Zhang is an academic tutor for MBBS students at Imperial College. He also works as a member of the BMB Core Faculty group at the college. He is a module lead of Pharmacogenomics in the MSC course of Genomic Medicine at NHLI, Imperial College London. He likes swimming, reading and jogging in his leisure time.