Dr. Jie Zhang is an Associate Professor in Bilingual/ESL Education at the University of Houston. She received her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology and M.S. in Statistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her areas of research expertise include bilingual and biliteracy development, bilingual/ESL teacher education, and equity-focused science instruction for multilingual learners. She has pursued two lines of research: 1) cognitive and psycholinguistic processes involved in bilingual and biliteracy acquisition; and 2) integrating language-rich practices and student funds of knowledge in science instruction for multilingual learners. She is currently a Co-PI for two NSF funded projects that support elementary pre-service and middle school in-service science teachers to integrate bilingual and literacy strategies and asset-oriented pedagogies in science teaching for multilingual learners.