Funding supports Ying Zhang’s project to advance wetland resilience across U.S. coastal systems
| Students in Ying Zhang’s lab conduct field sampling at Succotash Marsh in South Kingstown this summer, part of the groundwork assessing biomarkers in marsh monitoring. (URI Photo / Y. Zhang) |
Ying Zhang, professor of cell and molecular biology at the University of Rhode Island, recently received a $4 million grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation to co-lead a collaboration with Louisiana State University to improve coastal wetland management in both states.
A computational biologist, Zhang, of South Kingstown, brings to the project a background that includes computer science and expertise in microbial diversity and molecular ecology.
Now she’ll bring that interdisciplinary background to lead this new project at URI, with Hui Zhou in URI’s Department of Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, Erin Peck in URI’s Graduate School of Oceanography, and colleagues at the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management and Roger Williams University.
Zhang’s diverse training gives her a unique perspective on solving
problems across traditional disciplinary boundaries, she said.
The Ecological-Economic Collaboratory for Advancing coastal
wetland REstoration and REsilience (EcoCARE)
project addresses the need for expanded research on coastal wetland restoration
in both regions. A team of scientists, practitioners, policy experts, and
stakeholders from Rhode Island and Louisiana will develop innovative methods in
AI-enhanced modeling, wetland valuation, molecular biomonitoring, and
restoration financing.
Although Zhang has led previous NSF grant-funded
initiatives, including a CAREER award and an EPSCoR fellowship, she is now
leading the multi-institutional EPSCoR project for the first time under the
Focused Collaborations Program. She has been meeting with the team since last
fall and is looking forward to the work getting underway.

















