Professor Zhenan Bao was born and raised in Nanjing, China. After completing the three-year undergraduate course at Nanjing University, she immigrated to the United States where she studied chemistry at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

In 1995, she got her PhD degree in chemistry at the University of Chicago. After that, she worked in the prestigious Bell Labs. She joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University in 2004 and is currently an associate professor. 

She is committed to research in chemistry, material science, energy, nano-electronics and molecular electronics, and has made significant discoveries. She is one of the leading female chemists in the United States.