Jinsong Zhang was born in Ningan, China. She obtained a bachelor’s degree from Shandong Normal University, Jinan and a master’s degree from Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. She then moved to The University of Montana, Missoula and received her PhD degree in organic chemistry in 2003. Under the instruction of Dr. Donald E. Kiely, her PhD research focused on Poly(alkylene D-aldaramides) synthesis and conformational studies of the corresponding polymers. She received several academic awards that included the Stanley R. Ames Scholarship (2002, 2000), Bertha-Morton Graduate Student Scholarship (2001), and Lola Walsh Anacker Scholarship (1999). Shortly thereafter Zhang joined the Pettus (Thomas, R. R.) group at University of California, Santa Barbara as a postdoctoral researcher working on natural product total synthesis and method development. She was appointed to the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, as a lecturer teaching general chemistry and organic chemistry in 2005 - 2006.