Ling Zhang is a Ph.D candidate in the Apparel, Merchandising, and Design Program at Iowa State University. During her doctoral studies she has been teaching Fashion Illustration classes for five semesters. She also has taught other 6 classes from the program, including Product Development and Manufacturing, Introduction to Apparel Design Studio, and Independent Studies which were not a part of her assistantship duties.

She is the 2015 winner of the ITAA Joan M. Laughlin Graduate Fellowship for Continuing Doctoral Students. 12 pieces of her design accepted and exhibited in prestigious peer-reviewed juried competitions. Her work as a designer has been recognized in peer-reviewed juried exhibitions, earning the highest honors by organizations such as the International Textiles & Apparel Association, International Fiber Recycling Symposium, International Arts of Fashion Competition, and Haining Tide Cup National Competition of Leather Fashion. She is also collaborating with faculties and other graduate students on research projects involving wearable art using digital printing and 3D printing techniques, 3D body scanning, teaching practices in design studios, and a meta-analysis of apparel design processes for creative designers, technical designers and product developers.

She is the author of the book "Fashion Design: Process and Practice"​, won the top seller of fashion design book in the country of China. She also has had 7 refereed presentations at professional conferences.
 

Her research areas are:

• ​Sustainable creative apparel design including developing and testing variety of natural dye materials and methods, upcycling second hand materials to create contemporary garments and wearable arts.

• Utilizing traditional handcrafts such as freeform embroidery, hand embroidery, hand beading, felting techniques on wearable art designs.

• Application of emerging technologies to creative design (Digital printing, 3D body scanning, Laser cutting).

• Investigating the existing design process models and then proposing a new design process model for wearable art design, and developing an evaluation methods for wearable art designers (dissertation topic).