Distinguished ProfessorDayong Jin

Dayong Jin is a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher, one of the world’s top 0.1% influential researchers across multiple fields. He has spent the past decade driving the transformation of photonics and materials into analytical, diagnostic and imaging devices for disease detection, including cancer. These devices use photonics technologies to analyse saliva, urine or blood to identify early signs of disease and toxins.

His research has been in the physical, engineering and interdisciplinary sciences, with expertise in optics engineering, automation devices, luminescent materials, microscopy imaging, and analytical chemistry, to enable rapid detection of cells and molecules.

More recently, Dayong has worked to develop rapid COVID-19 spike-protein tests that allow virus detection from asymptomatic patients. These tests deliver quick results at a reduced cost.

This technology builds upon his “Super Dots”, a new family of nanophotonic probes that can up-convert infrared photons into intense visible light at the nanoscale. Several fascinating properties have been discovered since to allow high-throughput bio-discoveries, data storage and high-security-level anti-counterfeiting applications, setting records for the tracking of single-molecule transport, super-resolution microscopy, nanoscale thermometry, and recently optical tweezers.

Dayong obtained his PhD from Macquarie University in 2007. At Macquarie, he was promoted to Lecturer in 2010, Senior Lecturer in 2013, Associate Professor in 2014 and Professorial Fellow in 2015.

He joined UTS in 2015, as a Chair Professor, to lead its research in Materials and Technology and to establish the Institute for Biomedical Materials and Devices (IBMD), of which he is the director.

IBMD leverages multi-disciplinary sciences in instrumental physics, materials science, photonics, nanotechnology, molecular biology and engineering to develop a range of research capabilities, and new technology solutions in the areas of cancer, neuron, pathogen, point-of-care testing, wearable and implantable biomaterials and devices.

Dayong also established the Australian Research Council Industry Transformation Research Hub for Integrated Devices for End-user Analysis at Low Levels (ARC IDEAL Research Hub), the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources’ Australia-China Joint Research Centre for Point of Care Testing (DISER POCT) and recently the UTS-SUSTech Joint Research Centre for Biomedical Materials & Devices. He has also been Chair Professor at Southern University of Science and Technology since 2019.

He has won the Australian Museum Eureka Prize (2015), the Australian Academy of Science engineering science medal (2017), the Australian Prime Minister Prize for Science – Physical Scientist of the Year (2017), and the Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship (2021). He is a fellow of Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering.