Zhibin Guan

Zhibin Guan

Profile

Zhibin is an internationally renowned materials chemist who has made important contributions to bioinspired dynamic and active materials, self-healing materials, malleable and recyclable polymers, biomaterials, and polymerization catalysis. He has received numerous awards and fellowships for his research contributions, including the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Fellowship, the Humboldt Bessel Research Award, the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, the NSF CAREER Award, and the Beckman Young Investigator Award. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He served as the Chair for the 2018 Bioinspired Materials Gordon Research Conference in Les Diablerets, Switzerland. Zhibin has published numerous peer-reviewed research papers in high impact journals such as Science, Nature Materials, Nature Chemistry, Nature Biotechnology, Advanced Materials. His research work has been featured by many scientific journals and popular news media such as Chemical & Engineering News, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, CNN, Forbes, etc. Zhibin joined the faculty of the Department of Chemistry at UC Irvine as an assistant professor in 2000. He was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2004, and to Full Professor in 2006. He is currently Professor in Chemistry, as well as an affiliated faculty in Biomedical Engineering, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and Materials Science and Engineering.

Education

B.S. & M.S., Peking University, China, 1987 & 1990
Ph.D., University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, 1994
Postdoc, Caltech, 1994-1995

Research

Zhibin pursues a broad range of research interests in soft materials design. Soft materials encompass the bulk of living tissues which possess characteristic living features such as being active, adaptive, and self-healing. Drawing inspiration from nature, Guan Lab is focused on the design, synthesis, and study of dynamic soft materials and functional biomaterials. Through creative molecular design and chemical synthesis, Guan lab has generated a plethora of supramolecular assemblies and polymers that are active, adaptive, malleable, and self-healing. In addition, Guan lab develops multifunctional biomaterials for the cellular delivery of various biomacromolecules, for CRISPR-Cas gene editing, and for immunomodulation. An overarching theme for Guan research is to build direct links between molecular structures and material properties, with the aim to rationally design soft materials from the bottom-up and control material properties at the molecular level.

Links

Guan Lab (https://www.chem.uci.edu/~zguan/)

Faculty profile: (https://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=4568)