Yong Zhao is the Presidential Chair of Global Education and Online Learning at the University of Oregon, where he also serves as the Associate Dean for Global Education and Online Learning and the Director of Center for Advanced Technology in Education (CATE). He is also a full professor in the Department of Educational Measurement, Policy, and Leadership (EMPL). He is a fellow of the International Academy for Education.

Before joining in the University of Oregon, Zhao was previously University Distinguished Professor at the College of Education, Michigan State University, where he also served as the founding director of the Center for Teaching and Technology, executive director of the Confucius Institute, as well as the US-China Center for Research on Educational Excellence.

Zhao has published over 20 books and 100 articles. His most recent book is Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization. He has also developed computer software, including the award-winning New Chengo/ZON [...] the worlds first massively multi-player online role-playing game for studying Chinese.

Zhao is an internally known education expert. He has been invited to speak on educational issues in nearly 20 countries on six continents over 400 times over the past three years. He has been interviewed as an education expert on global education issues by international media outlets such as USA Today, The New York Times, NPR, China Xinhua News Agency, The Times Education Supplement, and Voice of America. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Education Week, Educational Leadership, and The Kappan. He maintains an active blog with a large audience at [...]. One of his blog posts received over 10,000 views within a week of posting.

Zhao was born in Chinäs Sichuan Province. He received his B.A. in English Language Education from Sichuan Institute of Foreign Languages in Chongqing, China in 1986. After teaching English in China for six years, he came to Linfield College as a visiting scholar in 1992. He then began his graduate studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1993. He received his A.M. in Education in 1994 and Ph.D. in 1996. He joined the faculty at MSU in 1996 after working as the Language Center Coordinator at Willamette University and a language specialist at Hamilton College.