Dr. Zhang received 29 US patents; authored and co-authored 24 books and book chapters, 330 refereed papers; delivered 500 colloquia, seminars, invited conference presentations, and 200 contributed conference talks. His H-index is 81. (Google Scholar on 7/2017).

Dr. Zhang is a fellow of AAAS, APS, IEEE, Optica, and SPIE. Dr. Zhang's honors and awards include: Australian Academy of Science Selby Fellow ’17; International Society of Infrared, Millimeter, and Terahertz Waves Kenneth F. Button Prize ’14; OSA William F. Meggers Award ’12; Moscow University Honorable Professor '12; IEEE Photonics Society William Streifer Scientific Achievement Award ’11; Rensselaer’s William H. Wiley Award ‘09; the Trustee Celebration of Faculty Achievement Awards ’09, ’08, ‘07, ‘06, ’04, ‘03, ‘02, ‘01; First Heinrich Hertz Lecturer (Germany); International Commission for Optics Traveling Lecturer ‘03; fellow lecturer of Optical Society of America ‘02; K.C. Wong Fellow ’02; distinguished lecturer of IEEE/LEOS ‘98-99 & 99-00; Rensselaer’s Early Career Award, ‘96; Cottrell Scholar Award, Research Corporation ‘95; K.C. Wong Prize, K.C. Wong Foundation /Hong Kong, ‘95; CAREER Award (previous NSF-NYI), National Science Foundation ‘95; AFOSR-SRPF Fellow, Hanscom Air Force Base ‘93-94; Research Initiation Award, National Science Foundation, 92.

Professor Zhang's research interests center around Terahertz waves, also known as T-rays, which exist within a frequency range between microwave and infrared. His research is focused on the generation, detection, and applications of free-space THz beams with ultrafast optics.