Dachuan Zhang

My current research focuses on leveraging AI to accelerate the discovery and design of functional ingredients for plant-based meat and adjacent fields. For example, we are developing generative AI models to identify novel sweet proteins—small, stable, microbially expressible peptides—that can enhance flavor and suppress off-notes in plant-based meat. In parallel, we use large language models (LLMs) and cheminformatics tools to decode the chemical complexity of plant-based foods, enabling systematic profiling of bioactive compounds and their interactions.