On September 24, Zhejiang University held a special ceremony to welcome Prof. GU Zhen to join the ZJU community as Dean of the College of Pharmaceutical Sciences.

“As an internationally-renowned scholar in the field of drug delivery and biomaterials, Prof. GU Zhen has made outstanding achievements.” said ZJU Vice President ZHANG Hongjian in the welcome ceremony. “His full-time appointment as Chair Professor and Dean of the College of Pharmaceutical Sciences will further promote teaching reform, scientific innovation and technology translation.”

“We will focus on two key words—innovation and resource, boosting prosperity of our college. We will strive to open a new chapter by enhancing the faculty recruitment, accelerating education reform and developing new therapeutics in a more precise manner,” GU Zhen said.

Before joining Zhejiang University, Prof. Gu was a Full Professor in the Department of Bioengineering at UCLA. From 2012 to 2018, he worked in the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University, where he was appointed as the Jackson Family Distinguished Professor. Prof. Gu’s group studies controlled drug delivery, biomaterials and cell therapy. Highlights of his innovations include glucose-responsive smart insulin patch and platelet-mediated cancer immunotherapy. He is the recipient of the Felix Franks Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2019), Biomaterials Science Lectureship Award (2018), Young Investigator Award of CRS (2017), Sloan Research Fellowship (2016) and Pathway Award of the American Diabetes Association (ADA, 2015). MIT Technology Review listed him in 2015 as one of the top innovators under the age of 35 (TR35).