Z. Hong Zhou was born in Hunan Province in China the year before the Cultural Revolution, the eldest of three siblings. His father was a factory worker who was home only one day a week; his mother a housewife who cared for her children. Though in school, Zhou felt as if he had little to no education prior to middle school, since the first few years of the Revolution were spent trying to organize an educational system (Zhou's first-grade teacher held class in an abandoned building found in the area). At the end of the Cultural Revolution, though, China committed itself to science and Zhou's father, in response, spent a month's salary on buying a set of science books for Zhou to encourage his education. At the age of fourteen Zhou went off to high school at a boarding school a distance away from his village, not returning to see his home for over a year. Zhou did well on his college entrance exams and, with an intense interest in high-energy physics, he applied to and was accepted at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei. Ultimately he received a master's degree under Lienchao Tsien conducting research using cyclotron radiation imaging, also intending to pursue a doctoral degree abroad. He started his graduate education at New York University but then moved on to the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, working in Wah Chiu's laboratory—his doctoral thesis focused on imaging the herpes virus. After meeting L. Ridgway Scott, Zhong decided to undertake a postdoctoral fellowship as a National Library of Medicine/National Institutes of Health-sponsored trainee in the Departments of Mathematics and of Computer Sciences at the University of Houston under Scott developing computational biology methods. From there he accepted a position at the University of Texas Medical Center studying viruses using structural and computational biology. At the end of the interview Zhong talks about balancing his family life and his career; the impact of the Pew Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences on his work; his lab management style; and the practical applications of his research. He also discusses his collaboration with industry; his future research developing the technology of imaging while studying viral cell interactions; and the process of conducting scientific research before speaking more about the role of the Pew Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences in his research.