Dr. Chuanzhen Zhao will join the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto as a Tenured-Track Assistant Professor, starting January 2027. His research establishes chemical engineering principles for soft bioelectronic interfaces, integrating materials design, biosensing, and circuits to enable continuous molecular monitoring in the body.
Dr. Zhao received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from UCLA under the supervision of Prof. Paul S. Weiss and Prof. Anne Andrews in 2020. Dr. Zhao has been an NIH F32 Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University since 2021, working with Prof. Zhenan Bao.
Selected Awards and Fellowships
2026 Bio-X Travel Award, Stanford
2025 The Top 25 Bruinventions of the 21st Century, UCLA
2023 NIH/NIBIB Kirschstein-NRSA F32 Fellowship
2023 Best PhD Thesis Award in Nanotechnology, IEEE
2022 Forbes 30 Under 30
2020 Gold Graduate Student Award, Materials Research Society (MRS)
2020 Dimitris N Chorafas Prize
2020 Dissertation Year Fellowship, UCLA
2020 Thomas and Ruth F. Jacobs Dissertation Award, UCLA
2019 Micromachines Best Poster Award
2019 Research Showcase Award, UCLA
2019 Outstanding Reviewer Award, IOP Publishing
2018 Excellent in Second Year Academics and Research Award, UCLA
2018 Elected Member, Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society
2015 Outstanding Graduate in Beijing Award
2014 National Scholarship, The Ministry of Education of P. R. China
2014 Outstanding Research and Presentation, CSST Program, UCLA
2014 Cross-disciplinary Scholars in Science and Technology Fellowship, UCLA
