Dr. Zhenghang Zhao, a professor of Pharmacology and Doctoral Supervisor, once served as the director of Department of Pharmacology, serves as the deputy director of Cardiovascular Institute Sciences. From September 2004 to March 2007, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Warwick, UK, and from January 2009 to November 2010, at the Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Sciences, Rutgers University, New Jersey School of Medicine, USA. He is a reviewer of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Chinese Postdoctoral Fund, Doctoral/Master's degree thesis of Academic Degree Center of Ministry of Education.

   His research team focuses on Cardiovascular Pharmacology and Physiology, including the Ionchannelpathy, Electrophysiology of Arrhythmias, Ca²⁺ handling, mitochondrial and lysosomal function and relevant diseases in the heart and other tissue, with particular emphasis on the mechanisms underlying cardiac hypertrophy, myocardial infraction, and cardiac remodeling/hear failure in experimental and natural animal models. The following techniques are used in the studies: patch clamp, single cell Ca²⁺ imaging and contraction, and intact tissue or whole-heart voltage, and molecular biology techniques including genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, transgenic animals etc., as well as the evaluation and development of new drug pharmacodynamics and toxicology and drug metabolism kinetics.

   He has got more than 15 scientific research projects supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (8 projects), the Ministry of Education of China, International cooperation, Science and Technology Bureau of Shaanxi Province, and more than 40 new drug research and development projects. He has published more than 50 academic papers in international academic journals such as Cardiovascular Res, JMCC, and FASEB J, Am J Physiol-Heart Circ Physiol, J Physiol (London)，Brit J Pharmacol，Acta Physiol(Oxf)，Antioxidants, Food and Function, etc.

The specific research topics are:

1. Mechanism and intervention of cardiac hypertrophy, cardiac remodeling and heart failure.

2. Ionic and cellular mechanisms for arrhythmias induced by a variety of pathological stress.

3. Basic study of Oncocardiology: the mechanism and prevention of cardiotoxicity during the treatment of malignant diseases.

4. The role of macrophages and their crosstalk with cardiomyocytes in cardiac ischemia and remodeling.

5. The mechanisms and drug targets of arterial stenosis and remodeling，pulmonary arterial hypertension