Dr Cheng Zhang is an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow (former National Health and Medical Research Council Fellow) at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN), The University of Queensland (UQ) where he leads a research group in polymer chemistry and PFAS remediation. He obtained his PhD degree in 2016 in Materials Engineering under supervision of Professor Andrew K. Whittaker.
From 2016 to 2018, he was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Whittaker group to develop advanced biomedical imaging agents. In 2019, he was awarded an NHMRC Fellowship and relocated to UCSB working with Professor Craig J. Hawker on block copolymer chromatography separation and self-assembly projects.
His research focuses on the development of advanced polymerization, purification and characterization techniques to prepare well-defined functional polymers with precisely-tailored properties for important applications from PFAS remediation, energy materials e.g. solid electrolytes to functional biomaterials e.g. imaging and therapeutic agents.
He has published over 70 journal articles, including Nature Materials, Nature Reviews Materials, Chemical Reviews, Journal of the American Chemical Society, ACS Nano, Macromolecules and etc. As CIA, he has successfully secured a number of competitive research grants from Australian Government, UQ and US DoD (>$2 million), regularly receives invitations to speak at national/international conferences (>30 to date), and has received numerous awards, including most recently Queensland Fresh Scientist, ACS Materials AU Rising Star, and UQ Industry Engagement Award.