UTS biomedical science expert recognised by top US institute

University of Technology Sydney (UTS) Distinguished Professor Dayong Jin has been elected as Fellow to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. AIMBE Fellows represent the most highly accomplished researchers and leaders in the field.

Professor Jin is one of only a small number of researchers outside the US to be elected as an AIMBE Fellow. He joined UTS in 2015 and established the Institute for Biomedical Materials and Devices. He is also a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher – one of the world’s top 0.1% influential researchers.

“This is a significant recognition of my work and it encourages me to do more in the field. Most importantly, this is a wonderful opportunity for me to interact with top biomedical engineers around the globe,” said Professor Jin. 

“I feel excited because I have spent the last 20 years pushing myself across the boundary into medical and biomedical engineering. My previous research was in photonics and nanotechnology,” he said.

Professor Jin originally trained as an optical photonics engineer, completing his PhD at Macquarie University in 2007. He then discovered a passion for medical devices and the development of flow cytometry – a technique used to detect and measure characteristics of a population of cells.

He also has expertise in optics engineering, automation devices, luminescent materials, microscopy imaging, and analytical chemistry, to enable rapid detection of cells and molecules.

“My career was in part inspired by my PhD supervisor, Professor Jim Piper. Sadly, he passed away last year. It was due to his influence that my research has spanned physical, engineering and interdisciplinary sciences,” said Professor Jin.

“I have 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.

Professor Jin’s current research interests are around the super resolution imaging of live cells. 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.

“We have combined super-resolution imaging with artificial intelligence and deep learning to reveal subcellular structures and dynamics. This cutting-edge technology will open new doors in the quest to understand the intricate world within our cells,” said Professor Jin. 

Professor Jin is currently the director of the Institute for Biomedical Materials and Devices, which carries out interdisciplinary, international and industrial collaborative research in photonics and materials to develop revolutionary biomedical technologies.