Professor Zhijian Chen was born in Tianjin, China in 1972. He studied chemistry at Peking University (BSc, 1996) and Institute of Photographic  Chemistry, Chinese  Academy of Sciences (MSc,1999). He obtained his PhD from University of Würzburg in 2006 under the supervision of Professor Frank Würthner for research on aggregation of perylene bisimide dyes. Subsequently, he joined the group of Professor Shaw H. Chen in Department of Chemical Engineering at the University  of Rochester as a postdoctoral research associate. In 2009, He was appointed as a professor in School of Chemical Engineering at Tianjin University. His current research interests include the synthesis and applications of functional dyes, self-assembly, nano materials, organic electronics, etc.