Liqing Zhang

Liqing Zhang is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), part of the College of Engineering. His research focuses on bioinformatics, data analytics, and machine learning applications in genomics and environmental science. He holds a Ph.D. in molecular evolution from the University of California, Irvine, and a B.S. in biochemistry from Lanzhou University, China.

His work emphasizes antibiotic resistance gene analysis, metagenomic data processing, and predictive modeling for environmental and public health challenges. Notable contributions include developing computational tools like CIWARS for antibiotic resistance surveillance and MetaCompare for risk assessment. His research also explores viral genomics, wastewater-based epidemiology, and interdisciplinary approaches to microbiome-related diseases.

Zhang’s publications span 2025 to 2017, with recent work addressing antibiotic resistance tracking in wastewater, machine learning-driven pathogen identification, and multi-omics integration for Alzheimer’s prediction. He collaborates on projects involving microbial ecology, environmental health risks, and computational infrastructure for bioinformatics workflows.