After graduating from medical school, Mingjie Zhu had several years of clinical experience in the day-to-day world of patient care in Qingdao, China, a port city of 10 million on the Yellow Sea.
“It felt so happy and rewarding that I was helping people,” he said. “But I wished to do more to turn the tide on the health side – to make a difference, even a tiny one.”
The desire to do more to understand the causes of disease and design ways to prevent it led Zhu to explore opportunities in public health. He was also interested in understanding how health care systems operate in countries outside China.
A major change and a well-earned award
Those questions led him to a big life change in 2014. He was just 24 years old. He switched disciplines, countries and cultures, traveling more than 6,000 miles, from Qingdao to Aurora, Colorado to enroll in the Colorado School of Public Health (ColoradoSPH) on the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. He earned his Master of Public Health (MPH) in Epidemiology in 2016.
Zhu was to depart Colorado for more education and intellectual challenges, but five years after receiving his MPH, he returned to join the Department of Orthopedics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. He is now a senior research professional and team leader in the Foot and Ankle Division, where he leads the research team of Dr. Mark Myerson and Dr. Shuyuan Li. The work focuses on innovative approaches to investigate pathologies, mechanisms, and new surgical techniques for treating different disorders in the lower extremities, Zhu explained.
On February 19, he capped his decade-long journey from China to Colorado with the Research Staff Collaborator Award, presented at the 2025 CU Anschutz Research Awards Ceremony - University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.
A twin commitment to research and patient care
Zhu summed up his work in a single sentence.
“When my team has a research idea, I am the one who ensures the details are in place to make it happen, from the beginning of designing the study to the closure of the paper’s publication.”
The simple explanation belies the effort that is involved. It includes writing and submitting grants, managing continuing reviews of protocols, performing statistical analysis, and preparing abstracts and manuscripts.
It also omits his strong drive to both strengthen the structure of health care and improve the lives of individuals. That double perspective comes from his early experience as a clinical provider in China and his training in public health.
“Clinicians working on the ‘front lines’ of patient care need ‘the vision’ to also recognize and study public health factors – such as societal and economic conditions – that influence and worsen health status beyond the disease's underlying pathology,” Zhu said. At the same time, he added, public health researchers “must have a feeling or connection with the patients. You cannot treat people as a single number in your chart. Behind every single parameter, there are real people.”
Plenty of helping hands
Zhu doesn’t hesitate to credit others for his hard-earned success in the United States. He called his award the product of close collaboration with Myerson and Li. “We work together as a great team – they are my mentors, teammates, and close friends,” he said.
The roots of his achievement go back much farther, he noted. For example, he recalled receiving an email as he sat in a class one day shortly after he began his studies at ColoradoSPH. The email congratulated him for receiving a dean’s scholarship to support his MPH work in Epidemiology.
He hadn’t applied for the scholarship, so he thought the email was spam until he showed it to a classmate. Only then did he find out that several of them had nominated him without his knowledge. Nor had they intended to let him know that they had played a role.
“I did not know how to thank them,” Zhu said. “This kind of help accompanied me all through my time at CU.”
One strong supporter, Zhu said, was his Foundations in Public Health instructor, Dr. Janet Gascoigne, clinical associate professor in the Department of Community and Behavioral Health and associate vice chancellor for student affairs at the University of Colorado – Anschutz Medical Campus.
“Jan was the one who introduced me into the public health world,” Zhu recalled. Gascoigne attended the awards ceremony with Dr. Madiha Abdel-Maksoud, associate professor with the Center for Global Health and associate dean for academic and student affairs at ColoradoSPH, who also instructed and encouraged Zhu during his MPH work. “Madiha was the one who actually taught me how to write a research protocol,” he recalled.
“Both continue to support me to this day,” he added. “I feel I am always being blessed. It’s why CU is not just a university to me. It welcomed me, educated me, equipped me with knowledge and skill sets, but it has been more than that.”
A long journey back to an adopted home
The award ceremony also marked the completion of a circuitous professional route Zhu took after earning his MPH. He worked for several months as a professional research assistant in Psychiatry at Children’s Hospital Colorado before moving on in 2017 to the American Academy of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine in Roseville, Minnesota, to enter a doctoral degree program. With his MPH in hand, he now wanted to experience clinical work in his adopted country.
“Considering my background, it was the most ideal situation for me to pursue a research, education and clinical experience in the United States,” he said. From 2017 to 2020, he pursued and earned his Doctor of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine degree while also teaching and supervising students. In early 2021, he returned to Colorado to join Myerson and Li as a professional research assistant.
Throughout much of his time in Minnesota, Zhu faced more than an academic and professional challenge. He was apart from his wife, Dr. Rongshu Jing, who had to remain in China. Their separation ended July 7, 2021. As he had built a more complete professional life, the reunion with Rongshu put back into place the most important piece of his personal life.
“She has trusted and supported me, guided and encouraged me for 15 years since the day we first met,” Zhu said. “It has been quite a journey, and I would have never made it this far without her. I also want to thank my parents for raising me with love and supporting me throughout my life – I hope I have made them proud.”
His nomination for the research award was another example of Zhu’s life coming full circle. As with his MPH scholarship about a decade ago, he received extensive, unsolicited support, first from Myerson and Li, then from many others who nominated him. He told his longtime supporter Gascoigne that he saw the research award as a kind of closure.
“It is a hallmark, an answer to my journey since 2014,” he said. “I wanted to make a little, tiny difference and turn the tide in health care. This award is a milestone. My peers and my university in the research field gave me a whisper and said, ‘Okay, Mingjie, yeah, you are starting to make a difference.’"
