Professor Zhiyong Fan, Co-Director of the SKL and Chair Professor in the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering (ECE) at HKUST. Prof. Fan received his B. S. and M. S. degree in physical electronics from Fudan University, Shanghai, China, in 1998 and 2001. He received Ph. D degree from University of California, Irvine in 2006 in Materials Science. From 2007 to 2010, he worked in University of California, Berkeley as a postdoctoral fellow in department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, with a joint appointment with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Since joining HKUST in 2010, Prof. Fan also currently serves as Associate Director of Materials Characterization & Preparation Facility at HKUST and Member of Energy Institute at HKUST.

Prof. Fan's research focuses on rational design and fabrication of nanostructures, basic understanding of their physical and chemical properties and the utilization of these materials for electronic/optoelectronic device applications. These devices include solar cells, photodetectors, light-emitting diodes and various type of sensors. Highly interdisciplinary in nature, his research involves electrical engineering, materials science and engineering, chemistry, and physics. He has made exceptional achievements in academic research in terms of journal publications, research grants, postgraduate student supervision, and entrepreneurship. Till date, he has published close to 210 peer reviewed papers with citations ~23,000, H-index 90, and is a highly cited author of Clarivate Analytics. He also has ~30 Chinese and US patents and two startups commercializing sensor technologies.

Prof. Fan as a renowned scientist with international reputation in the areas of nanomaterials, nanoelectronics, and optoelectronics. He is a IEEE Senior Member , a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, UK and named a OPTICA Fellow in 2023. Prof. Fan has won a number of awards, including 2022 Tencent Xplorer Prize, 2022 HKBOC Science and Technology Innovation Prize, Shandong Natural Science Second Prize, 2022 and 2020 Top 10 Research Progress on Semiconductors in China, HKUST SENG Young Investigator Award, Outstanding Research Award, IEEE Sensor Research Scholarship Award, UC Berkeley BSAC Outstanding Research Presentation Award, 2019 HKUST SENG Research Excellence Award, 2018 ESI Highly Cited Researcher etc. He currently serves as an editorial board member of NPG Scientific Reports and Springer Nanoscale Research Letters, and Journal of Semiconductors.