Zhang was born in
Changsha County,
Hunan, in July 1966. He attended . In 1984, he was accepted to
Peking University, where he majored in the Department of Mathematics. After graduating in 1992, Zhang stayed and worked at Peking University, where he was promoted to associate professor in 1994 and to full professor in 1996. In 2015, he was appointed director of the Discipline Construction Office of Peking University, a post he kept until 2019, when he became director of the Peking University Big Data Science Research Center. He moved up the ranks to become assistant president in August 2019 and vice president in December of that same year. On 28 December 2022, the
Organization Department of the Chinese Communist Party appointed Zhang as president of
Wuhan University, a position at vice-ministerial level. ==Honours and awards==