Hong-Cai “Joe” Zhou earned his Ph.D. in 2000 from Texas A&M University under the mentorship of F. A. Cotton, followed by postdoctoral research at Harvard University with R. H. Holm. He began his independent career at Miami University, Oxford, in 2002 and rose to full professor within six years for his pioneering work on Metal–Organic Frameworks (MOFs)—a field new to him at the time.

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In 2008, Dr. Zhou returned to Texas A&M University, where he was named Davidson Professor of Science in 2014 and Robert A. Welch Chair in Chemistry in 2015. He served as an Associate Editor of Inorganic Chemistry (ACS) for ten years (2013-2022) and is currently the Deputy Editor for ACS Materials Letters (2024-). His professional recognition includes a JSPS Invitation Fellowship (2014), continuous listing as a Highly Cited Researcher since 2014, election as Fellow of the AAAS, ACS, and RSC in 2016, the Distinguished Achievement Award in Research from the Texas A&M Association of Former Students (2017), and the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Research Award from the Humboldt Foundation (2022).