Dr. Xin Zhao is an Assistant professor at the Department of Biomedical Engineering, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She obtained her PhD at University College London, UK and postdoc training at Harvard University, USA, worked as an associate professor at Xi’an Jiaotong University before joining PolyU. Her research interest is Translational Regenerative Medicine, where she integrates multi-disciplinary approaches including material science, cell biology and medicine to modulate cell microenvironments, control cell behaviors and generate tissue-engineered organs, for addressing clinical issues.

So far she has published >80 articles (with h-index of 30 in Google Scholar, 5 of which are ESI highly cited paper) in prestigious journals including Chemical Reviews, Materials Today, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Advanced Functional Materials, Angewandte Chemie International Edition, Biomaterials, Small. She has successfully attracted over 10 grants (⁓7 million) as principal investigator from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (RGC), Health and Medical Research Fund (HMRF), Innovation and Technology Fund of Hong Kong (ITF), National Science Foundation of China (NSFC), private company, etc. She is the recipient of the Faculty Award of 2019 (only 3 were selected from 155 academic staff of the Engineering Faculty of PolyU). With only 4 participants selected from Asia, she represented Hong Kong in the prestigious Asia Pacific Research Network Fellowship Program in 2018. In 2019, she also represented PolyU (only one selected from PolyU) at the Max Planck Croucher Symposium themed ‘Matter to Life’ and in 2020 as the K. C. Wong Education Foundation visiting scholar to deliver talks in mainland China. Moreover, she has been shortlisted for the “Nature Research Awards for Inspiring Science” in 2019 (10 shortlisted from >150 applicants globally).