Yaoping Zhang was a senior scientist who led the Experimental Fermentation Lab, one of the core facilities at the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC), from 2011 to 2024. His lab supports the center by producing hydrolysates from various feedstocks, including corn stover and switchgrass, and the conversion residues, as well as providing fermentation capacity.  Using various hydrolysates, his group also examines the performance of engineered microbial strains from Zymomonas mobilis and yeast and helps to identify and remove key bottlenecks in the conversion of biomass to biofuels. In collaboration with the other teams within GLBRC, they also perform multiomic fermentation of microbes, and multiomic data analysis to better understand and identify barriers to efficient biofuel synthesis from lignocellulose.