Bio
Dr. Zhong is the Principal Investigator at National Hear Centre Singapore and Associate Professor at Duke NUS Medical School. Dr. Zhong received his PhD in Engineering from the Nanyang Technological University (2005), and also served as a postdoctoral fellow at Nanyang Technological University (2005-2006) and Bologna University (2007). In 2006, he accepted a position at National Heart Centre Singapore and is now leading cardiovascular engineering and technologies and directs Cardiovascular System Imaging and Artificial Intelligence Lab, a core facility housed in National Heart Research Institute Singapore. Dr. Zhong’s research interests include cardiovascular imaging, mechanics and physiology, multiscale computational modelling and artificial intelligence (AI). A central objective of Dr. Zhong's research program is to develop novel techniques towards applications in clinical research. The work of his research group has been instrumental in establishing curvedness based magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for the comprehensive assessment of cardiac shape, deformation and function in heart disease. Second, his group has developed novel imaging tools for the evaluation of coronary calcium score, epicardial adipose tissue, stenosis, plaque characteristics, and fractional flow reserve (FFR) in coronary artery disease. Clinical applications have provided new insights into the specific links between aging, diabetes, therapy, intervention and functional changes within the heart and cardiovascular system.
To date, he has secured S$14.8 million funds as principal investigator and S$11.3 million as Co-I funded by National Medical Research Council (NMRC), BioMedical Research Council (BMRC), National Research Foundation (NRF) and A*STAR. His accomplishments include a total of >170 peer reviewed publications, >100 conference paper and abstracts, 19 book chapters, 1 book, 8 patents, and >100 invited presentations. Dr. Zhong is a recipient of the Young Investigator Award of the Singapore Cardiac Society (2011 & 2012), Young Investigator Award of the ASEAN Federation of Cardiology (2012), Sejong Medical Award from Asia-Pacific Pediatric Cardiac Society (2012), “Huanghe Bei” Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition Award (2015), and GCEO excellent research award (2021). He is a president of IEEE EMBS Chapter Development Committee, chair of Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (Singapore Chapter) and committee member of International Society of Magnetic Resonance in Imaging (Singapore Chapter).
Education
Doctor of Philosophy
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering
Huazhong University of Science & Technology, China
Bachelor of Science
Huazhong University of Science & Technology, China