Biosensor Gas sensor Bionanotechnology Environmental Biotechnology High Temperature Nanomaterials based Sensing Microfluidic-based biosensor Biomaterials The primary area of my research is to develop novel, simple, cost-effective, ultrasensitive, and universal (bio)sensor and/or nanomaterial-based sensor platforms for the detection of biological and chemical species, which combine the principles of chemical engineering, nanotechnology and molecular biology for food, agriculture, homeland security, environmental and biomedical monitoring. I will continuously concentrated on these fields and emphasize on their application. In addition, I have strong interests to establish a new research area in novel functional (nano)structured materials based elecctrooxidation and reduction in sensing and energy application. I hope I could build up my strong reputation in the fields mentioned above at UConn in 5-10 years. In order to achieve my long-term scholarly goals, I have taken actions right after I joined in UConn. First, I discuss my career development plan with other senior faculty in my department and listen to their advice and suggestion on how to supervise graduate students and how to write proposals. Second, I contact the program managers of various funding agencies and consult them on the current funding situation and how to write successful proposals. Third, I also look for chances to serve on the review panels for various federal funding agencies. Such activity brought invaluable experience to me. Fourth, I collaborate with the junior and senior professors at UConn and other universities. We exchange the research experience and write strong proposals together by combining our expertise in different areas. Fifth, I take every chance to attend the national and international conferences. I not only present my research in front of other scientists, but also meet a lot of giants in my area and establish contact with them, which would be beneficial to my future career. Sixth, I accept the invitation to serve on the technical expert panel for The Environmental and Water Industry Development Council, Singapore, which is helpful to build up my international reputation. Last, but not least, I publish high quality peer-review papers in prestigious journals and let other researches know my research progress at UConn. So far, great progress has been made along this direction. I already has over 70 significant publications related to (bio)sensor and electrooxidation in high profile journals such as “Journal of Physical Chemistry C”, “Biosensors and Bioelectronics”, “Journal of Materials Chemistry”, “Biotechnology and Bioengineering”, “Electrochemistry Communications”, and “Environmental Science and Technology” and has over 70 presentations including a number of invited talks nationally and internationally. I am currently serving on the Editorial Board of “Applied Biochemistry and Biotechnology” and “Analytical Letters” and also served as a guest editor for “International Journal of Nanotechnology”, “Analytical Letters”, and “International Journal of Environment and Waste Management” for special issues. I was invited to serve on NSF CAREER panel as well as the sensor/biosensor review panels for NIH and EPA, and also appointed to The Technical Expert Panel by The Environmental and Water Industry Development Council, Singapore (2007). I also served as co-Chair for Biotechnology Poster session in ACS Annual Conference (2008), co-Chair for Environmental Biotechnology session in AIChE Annual Conference (2008), co-chair for the BIT’s 3rd Annual World Congress of Industrial Biotechnology, and chair for Bionanotechnology session in Institute of Biological Engineering Annual Conference 2011. In addition, I was also awarded a number of federal grants as PI or co-PI (e.g. NSF, DHS, DOI/USGS, DOE, etc.).

I’d like to be an effective, knowledgeable and enthusiastic professor in the classroom. Based on my understanding, teaching is not only providing students materials to learn, but also educating them how to learn. I believe that a good teacher needs to (a) be well prepared to present the course materials, (b) motivate the students by providing them with practical examples of the applications of the subject, (c) start with simple and intuitive examples to make the subject easily understandable for everyone, but also provide more abstract and in-depth explanations for more advanced students, (d) integrate research elements in advanced courses through projects, and (e) interact with the students and be receptive to their feedback. I always integrate the above qualities in my current teaching effort, and also will do in future. As a faculty in School of Engineering, I believe that engineering is a problem-solving profession. Besides learning the basic concepts in all chemical and biochemical branches, I do believe that solving real problems from industry is very important for students who will finally serve in industry. As a registered Professional Engineer (P.E), I supplied more real problems to students in my lecture, discuss with them and cultivate their abilities to solve industry-relevant problems using my related experiences. I believe that this kind of training/instructing is beneficial to students in their future careers. I also note that more figures, tables and electronic handouts will be greatly useful as supplements to my oral presentation in class; meanwhile I made my lecture more understandable and save a lot of time in writing by using powerpoint presentation and LCD projector in the classroom. Additionally, science and technology is developing very fast and textbook is hard to include the newest theories. So I always bring the recently published literatures, which are related to the teaching materials in the textbook, for discussion and self-study, and let students updated with the newly developed science and technology. Furthermore, in order to achieve more polished and effective presentation and communication skills in the classroom, I actively took Effective Communication Class and Communication Workshop offered by School of Engineering in Spring 2010. Through extensive one-semester study, I significantly improve my effectiveness, clarity and confidence in public speaking, social situations and personal engagement and nurture better instructional success through thoughtful diction, pronunciation, voice projection and presentation capabilities, which would greatly benefit my future career. Kinetics, Biochemical Engineering, Bioanalytical Techniques; Senior Lab; Special topics in biosensor and chemical sensor

My academic goal is to employ various strategies to make our students be successful. In addition, I will become a leading expert in sensor and biosensor community. Moreover, another focus will be developing center proposal by bringing faculty with interdisciplinary background together to solve more challenging problems. The success of these activities will not only benefit to our undergraduate education and my research, but also will impact our society with a handful of technologies in place.