Ji Zhang

Ji Zhang is senior partner and senior vice president, Enterprise R&D and Operations at Flagship Pioneering. In this role, Ji is responsible for Flagship Labs operations, and works in collaboration with Flagship’s origination teams to drive R&D processes and operational excellence across Flagship Labs; and as a member of Flagship’s senior leadership team Ji provides expertise, support, and thought leadership to Pioneering Medicines and Flagship ecosystem companies.

Ji joins the firm from Sanofi where he was most recently senior vice president and global head of R&D Operations, where he led large, diverse, interdisciplinary teams of scientific and operations staff in 30+ countries delivering many new medicines with reduced cycle time, strong quality, and financial management, while leveraging flexible business models. Ji also developed Sanofi’s integrated R&D digital strategy and implementation. Prior to joining Sanofi, Ji was senior director of Clinical Biostatistics at Merck Research Laboratories. Over his 30-year biopharmaceutical career he has made significant contributions to the development and successful marketing of medicines in the respiratory, diabetes, cardiovascular, immunology, rare diseases, and oncology therapeutic areas.

Ji is a well-recognized talent-development leader in a global multi-cultural environment with particular attention paid to diversity and inclusion. He has a passion for supporting public education and medical research activities, and has served and continues to serve on the boards of several not-for-profit organizations.

Ji holds a B.S. and M.S. in Mathematics, Probability & Statistics from Peking University, and earned a Ph.D. in Statistics from North Carolina State University. He is an elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association. He has published extensively in clinical development and research methodology areas.