He received his B.A. in Chemistry from Zhengzhou University, China, his M.S. in Chemistry from Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis. He entered biomedical research field as a Ph.D. student working on the structure-function of calcium-activated potassium channels; then received his postdoctoral training at University of California, San Francisco, working on the recently discovered TMEM16 calcium-activated chloride channels and calcium-activated lipid scramblases. His lab at Duke studies membrane ion and lipid transport at molecular, cellular and organism levels using a combination of biophysical, optical, genetic, and physiologic approaches.