Biography: Zhibin was raised in Anhui Province, China and went to Beijing for his higher education. After finishing both his undergraduate and master's education at Peking University, he came to the United States for his Ph.D. He received his Ph.D. in 1994 at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Following a postdoctoral stint at Caltech and a short career at DuPont, in 2000 he joined the faculty of the Department of Chemistry at UC Irvine as an assistant professor. He was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2004, and to Full Professor in 2006. From 2006, he also became affiliated faculty of the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Department of Chemical Engineering and Material Science at UC Irvine. He has received recognition of his research with several awards and fellowships, 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, the Beckman Young Investigator Award, and an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was elected as the Chair for the 2018 Bioinspired Materials Gordon Research Conference.

Zhibin pursues a broad range of research interests that include new polymerization chemistry through catalysis, bioinspired materials design, self-healing and dynamic materials, single molecule force study of polymers, and functional biomaterials for gene delivery and immunology. His research work has been featured many times in scientific journals and popular newspapers such as C&EN News, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, CNN, Forbes, etc. Zhibin and his wife Jane live in Irvine, CA and have a daughter Grace and a son Brian.

Education:

• Postdoctoral Fellow, Caltech (1994-1995)
• Ph.D., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (1994)
• M.S. and B.S., Peking University, China (1990 and 1987)
Complete CV