Mr. Zhang was the founding CEO of eLong.com, which he built as a leading online travel service company in China from 1999 to 2003. eLong.com was later partly acquired by Expedia.com and filed for IPO on NASDAQ (NASDAQ: long) in October 2004. From 1998 to 1999, Mr. Zhang served as the head of product development at Sohu.com (NASDAQ: sohu), which he built from a directory search site into a major portal in China. Prior to Sohu.com, Mr. Zhang was a Ph.D. candidate in genetics at Harvard Medical School from 1995 to 1998. During his years at Harvard, Mr. Zhang founded Harvard China Review, Inc., which produces journal publications and organizes conference series that dedicating to China issues.
Mr. Zhang studied biology as an undergraduate student at Fudan University in Shanghai, worked at Columbia University Medical School. Mr. Zhang received his B.A. in biology and chemistry from Concordia College in Minnesota in 1992 and his Master degree in biomedical science from Harvard University in 2001.