Dr. Zhihua Gao completed her undergraduate and master studies at Xiangya School of Medicine, Central South University. She obtained her PhD at University of Alberta, Canada. After a short post-doctoral training at Baylor College of Medicine in the United States, she joined the Neuroscience Research Center at Zhejiang University.

Dr. Gao is interested in exploring how neural-immune interactions and neuroendocrine network affect neural development and emotional disorders. Her group mainly focuses on how two particular type of cells in the brain , microglia and magnocellular neuroendocrine cells, regulate brain development and emotional and social behaviors . Her recent findings have been published in multiple high-calibre acedmic journals such as Neuron, Nature Metabolism,  Brain, Cell Rep and Nat Protoc etc.