Rate My Professor Jiajia Zhou

Professor Jiajia Zhou is a Professor in the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences within the Faculty of Science at the University of Technology Sydney. She received her PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, in 2013. After completing her doctorate, she joined China Jiliang University as a lecturer and established an independent research group. During this period, she held visiting scholar positions at the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan and the University of Stuttgart in Germany from 2012 to 2015, gaining expertise in nanofabrication and microscopic optical characterization. In late 2016, she joined the Institute for Biomedical Materials and Devices at UTS as a theme leader in spectroscopic physics and nanophotonics. In 2017, she was awarded the ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award Fellowship and the UTS Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellowship. Zhou has progressed to hold ARC Future Fellowship (FT2) for the Single Molecular Antigen Rapid Test project and NHMRC Emerging Leadership Level 2 Investigator grant.

Zhou specializes in lanthanide nanophotonics, spectroscopic physics, luminescence nanothermometry, and rapid diagnostic technologies, developing non-linear optical nanoprobes for applications in super-resolution nanoscopy, anticounterfeiting, and point-of-care biomedical diagnostics, including next-generation COVID-19 tests. Her research has resulted in over 100 peer-reviewed publications in prestigious journals such as Nature, Nature Photonics, Nature Methods, and Nature Communications, attracting thousands of citations with an h-index of 35. Notable publications include 'Advances in highly doped upconversion nanoparticles' (2018, over 1200 citations), 'Amplified stimulated emission in upconversion nanoparticles for super-resolution nanoscopy' (2017, over 900 citations), and 'Advances and challenges for fluorescence nanothermometry' (2020). She has received major awards including the Pawsey Medal from the Australian Academy of Science (2024), Sturge Prize (2019), Finalist in the Australian Museum Eureka Prizes for Outstanding Early Career Researcher (2019), Emerging Leader in Science (2020), Mid-Career Research Award in the MAPS Awards (2021), and UTS Faculty of Science Supervisor of the Year (2024). Zhou serves as an associate editor for a journal, contributes to committees, and supervises PhD students, significantly impacting nanotechnology and photonics fields.