He also holds the position as the Director of the Psychiatry Research Center, Beijing HuiLongGuan Hospital, Peking University. Dr. Zhang has focused on schizophrenia and drug dependence/addiction research throughout his career. His areas of expertise include comprehensive studies in clinical symptom, cognition, biomarkers, genetics and clinical psychopharmacology. The goal of his research is to examine and understand the mechanisms underlying schizophrenia and drug dependence/addiction in order to build rational treatments for the illness. One set his studies focus is genetics of psychiatric illness. They study a range of behavioral phenotypes including schizophrenia and nicotine dependence.