An Interesting Resume

Professor Zhang Yangde (张阳德) has many significant titles. He is the leader of the National Hepatobiliary & Enteric Surgery Research Center (NHEC), the National Key Laboratory of Nanobiological Technology, the Institute of Biomedical Engineering of Central South University (中南大学), the Institute of Endoscopic Medicine of Central South University, etc. Through his leadership position, he has direct control of billions RMB in research funding.

NHEC has a web site that links to Zhang's various research institutes and activities. It also has an accompanying English version. But if anyone is interested to learn about Zhang's achievements and qualifications, he/she will quickly find out that the links to Zhang's personal information, in both English and Chinese editions, all lead to a "page not found" error. It's been like that since the summer of 2007.

Before that, those links proudly led to Zhang Yangde's personal resume. During the summer, Fang Zhouzi took an interest in Zhang's resume after someone reported that Zhang had obtained a major funding in nano-biological research through improper means. Fang found Zhang's resume more than interesting and wrote a series of articles exposing Zhang's fraudulent claims in it. After that, the resume disappeared from the NHEC site (but they didn't bother to fix the links). A copy of the resume can still be seen at the bottom of Fang's article here.

Apart of obvious language mishaps, Zhang's resume has some serious issues:

The resume claimed that Zhang had obtained a Ph.D. degree in the US during the period of 1987-1991. But it did not specify where the degree was earned. According to the same resume, Zhang was working as a surgeon and professor at Central South University during the time period. It did not seem that Zhang had studied in the US at all.

Zhang's resume also listed an impressive collections of Zhang's titles:

• Vice-President, International Endoscopist Association (USA)
• Vice-President, US-Asian International Exchange Foundation
• Director, Committee of Japanese Explosive Association
• Director, Committee of International Explosive Association (USA)
• Director, Committee of International Hepatobiliary & Enteric Surgery Association (UK)

None of these organizations seems to actively exist. They are more likely organizations registered with the sole purpose of boasting resume.

One organization that does seem to exist is the American Association of Nanoscience and Technology, which lists Professor Zhang as its Chairman. Interesting enough that here Zhang was listed as a person from the US, even though he lives and works in China. This AANST co-publishes a quarterly journal Nanoscience with Zhang's institutes in China.

Despite its official-sounding name, AANST was registered in the State of Washington in 2005 by someone named Hongbo Chen. The vast majority of articles published in Nanoscience are originated in China. The magazine boasts a big editorial board, most of them are Chinese names.
Fang Zhouzi carefully examined the non-Chinese names in the list and found a few are American medical doctors, engineers, or even real estate agents, who might have crossed paths with Zhang's previous visits to the US. None of them have expertise in nano-science at all.

Professor Zhang has maintained a dead silence since Fang's exposure, other than taking down his resume page.