The Zhao’s laboratory seeks elemento-organic chemistry solutions to problems at the interface of synthetic chemistry, drug discovery and material science. Central to their efforts is the development of highly-efficient methodologies towards structurally novel main-group-containing compounds and the manipulation of their electrochemical and photophysical properties, with a current emphasis on organosilicon chemistry. Zhao’s group has recently succeeded in 1) catalytic cleavage of C‒Si bonds and 2) late-stage C‒H functionalization of organosilanes. Some achievements obtained in his group include (a) strain-release Denmark-Hiyama silacyclization; (b) ring expansion via cross-dimerization of two different strained rings; (c) development of silicon- or boron-containing π-conjugated materials. He has obtained Thieme Chemistry Journal Award (2019), NSFC for Excellent Young Scholars (2020), Youth Thousand Talents Program (2017), Alexander von Humboldt-Fellowship (2013) and published> 60 papers (> 4500 citations, H-index = 35) including Nat. Chem., Nat. Commun., J. Am. Chem. Soc., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. etc.