Dr. Xiao Zhiyan received her Ph.D. in medicinal chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2003. Following a brief post-doctoral period, she joined the Institute of Materia Medica, Peking Union Medical College and Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in 2004, where she is currently Professor of Medicinal Chemistry. Dr. Xiao's research emphasizes the integration of chemoinformatic techniques and medicinal chemistry efforts. Her research interests focus on rational drug design-guided lead identification and optimization, which involves two alternative approaches either oriented by molecular targets or guided by natural lead structures. Recently, her research efforts are mainly devoted to the discovery of drug candidates for metabolic diseases and malignant tumors.