Dr. Zhang has been Professor of Global and Environmental Health at Duke University since 2013. He has established and directs Exposure Biology and Chemistry Laboratory housed within the Nicholas School of the Environment in the Levine Science Research Center. As of March 2025, Dr. Zhang published more than 345 peer-reviewed articles in environmental sciences journals and medical journals. His work has been featured in major international media outlets such as the Time, the New York Times, BBC, ABC, CBS, NPR, Yahoo News, etc. His early work on characterizing sources of non-CO2 greenhouse gases made him one of the officially recognized contributor to the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to IPCC. He is the 2012 recipient of the Jeremy Wesolowski Award, the highest award of the International Society of Exposure Science. He received a Distinguished Alumni Award from the Rutgers Graduate School. In 2013, he was named an AAAS Fellow.

Dr. Zhang's research interests include developing novel biomarkers of human exposure and health effects, assessing health and climate co-benefits of air pollution interventions, and examining biological mechanisms by which environmental exposures exert adverse health effects. Dr. Zhang has led numerous international collaborations to study air pollution health effects and underlying pathophysiologic mechanisms as well as indoor air quality interventions. His work, for the first time, showed that the mixture of ozone reaction products generated indoors was potentially more toxic than ozone itself. he is currently pursuing research to better understand the toxicity and health effects of ozone reaction products. He is currently assessing health effects of wildland-urban interface (WUI) fires in Maui and Los Angeles.