His present research aggregates around three themes: intelligent-like behavior of microorganisms in confined spaces, which manifests in the process of survival and growth; dynamic micro/nanodevices, such as microfluidics/lab-on-a-chip, and devices based on protein molecular motors, with applications in diagnosis, drug discovery and biocomputation; and micro/nano-structured surfaces for biomedical microdevices.

Prof. Nicolau presented his keynote on Brainless intelligence: Biological agents exploring space in networks at EAI BICT 2021 conference.

He is an EAI Fellow 2020 and the General Chair at ICMTEL 2022 conference. Prof. Zhang is also a co-editor-in-chief of EAI Endorsed Transactions on e-Learning journal. 

Prof. Zhang's research interests comprise image processing, artificial intelligence, data mining, and machine learning. 

He presented his keynote speech on Transfer Learning and Chest CT for COVID-19 Detection at EAI eLEOT 2020 conference.