Dr. Di Zhao earned her Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Fudan University in 2014, with a major research focus on cancer metabolism. Then, Dr. Zhao started her postdoctoral training under Dr. Ronald DePinho at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in the Department of Cancer Biology. Her highly productive postdoctoral research focused on prostate cancer genetics and biology and made significant contributions, including the identification of CHD1 as a key epigenetic factor in advanced prostate cancer and tumor microenvironment remodeling. During her doctoral and postdoctoral training, Dr. Zhao has published several first-author research articles in high-profile journals, including Cancer Cell (2013), J Clin. Invest. (2014), Nature (2017), and Cancer Discovery (2020).

In 2019, Dr. Zhao started her independent laboratory as a tenure-track assistant professor in the Department of Experimental Radiation Oncology at MD Anderson. In 2025, Dr. Zhao was promoted to assistant professor with tenure at MD Anderson.  Her research focuses on prostate cancer genomics and biology, with a special interest in understanding crosstalk between cancer cells and immune components in the tumor microenvironment and metastatic niche. Combining state-of-the-art genetically engineered mouse modeling systems and single-cell multi-omics, her team has successfully characterized several genetic determinants that drive prostate cancer progression, tumor microenvironment remodeling, and resistance to therapies. These studies were recently published in high-profile journals, including Nature Cancer (2025), Nature Communications (2025), Science Translational Medicine (2023), and Cancer Research (2022). Dr. Zhao has been awarded various awards and grants as PI, including the K99/R00 Award, CPRIT Recruitment Award, NIH NCI R01s, Prostate Cancer Foundation Challenge Award, and DoD Idea Development Award, among others. She has served on various grant review committees at the national and international levels, served as an editorial board or reviewer for 20+ scientific journals, and organized and chaired sessions at national and international conferences. Dr. Zhao was selected as a NextGen Star for the AACR Annual Meeting 2025.