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Biography

Dr. Zhen Gu is a Full Professor in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Dr. Gu received his B.S. degree in Chemistry and M.S. degree in Polymer Chemistry and Physics from Nanjing University. In 2010, he obtained Ph.D. at UCLA, under the guidance of Dr. Yi Tang in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. He was a Postdoctoral Associate working with Dr. Robert Langer at MIT and Harvard Medical School during 2010 to 2012. Before he moved to UCLA in 2018, he had been appointed as a Jackson Family Distinguished Professor in the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University.

Dr. Gu’s group studies controlled drug delivery, bio-inspired materials and nanobiotechnology, especially for cancer and diabetes treatment. He has published over 190 research papers and applied over 80 patents. He is a co-founder of three start-up companies. He serves as an Associate Editor for Nano Research and Science Advances. He is also a Focus Group Chair of Bioinspired and Biomimetic Delivery (BBD) in the Controlled Release Society (CRS). Dr. Gu is the recipient of the Sloan Research Fellowship (2016), Biomaterials Science Lectureship Award (2018), Young Investigator Award of CRS (2017), Alcoa Foundation Research Achievement Award (2017), Pathway Award of the American Diabetes Association (ADA, 2015) and Young Innovator Award in Cellular and Molecular Engineering of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES, 2015). MIT Technology Review listed him in 2015 as one of the global top innovators under the age of 35 (TR35). He was elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) in 2019.