Professor Zhiyong Fan received his BS and MS degrees in Physical Electronics from the Department of Materials Science, Fudan University in 1998 and 2001, and his PhD degree in Interdisciplinary Materials Science from the University of California, Irvine in 2006. From 2007 to 2010, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley and the Division of Materials Science at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He joined the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) in 2010, and is currently a professor in the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering and the Department of Biological and Chemical Engineering. He is the Founding Director of HKUST Center on Smart Sensors and Environmental Technologies, Deputy Director of HKUST Materials Characterization and Preparation Facility, Deputy Director of Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Joint Laboratory on Intelligent Micro-Nano Optoelectronics, member of State Key Laboratory of Advanced Display and Optoelectronics Technology, HKUST Energy Institute and Sports Engineering Research Center. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a Fellow of the Optica, a senior member of IEEE, and a founding member of the Young Academy of Sciences of Hong Kong. He is also the deputy secretary-general of the Nanomaterials and Devices Branch of the Chinese Materials Research Society.
Professor Fan's research focuses on the development of novel nanoelectronic and optoelectronic materials for various high-performance optoelectronic devices and bionic devices, especially bionic sensory devices including bionic eyes and bionic electronic noses. He developed the world's first nanowire bionic eye device and reported in Nature in 2020. It has brought hope for the blind to see light again, and was regarded as "an important breakthrough in the development of bionic eyes in the past few decades" by the community. Nearly 100 media from 20 countries have extensively reported this work, and it has also been selected as "Top 10 Innovation and Technology News in Hong Kong of 2020" and "Top 10 Progress in Semiconductors in China of 2020". The bionic eye technology can also be used in robotics and autonomous driving that require advanced optoelectronic sensors. Up-to-date, Professor Fan has published more than 220 research papers in top journals such as Nature, Nature Photonics, Nature Materials, Nature Communications, Science Advances, etc., with more than 25,000 citations and an H index of 82. He is a world top 2% scholar, highly cited researcher in 2018. Professor Fan is also committed to exploring the commercialization potential of the above-mentioned advanced technologies in environmental protection and health applications. He has over 30 Chinese and US patents and a Chinese High-tech Enterprise. Professor Fan has won many awards, including the BSAC Outstanding Research Award of the University of California, Berkeley, the Young Investigator Research Award, Research Excellence Award of the HKUST SENG, the Second Prize of the Natural Science Award of Shandong Province, and the First Golden Goal Award of HKUST Xplorers’ Football Team.