Professor Jackie Yi-Ru Ying

Jackie Yi-Ru Ying, Ph.D. was born in Taipei, and raised in Singapore and New York, and graduated with B.E. summa cum laude in Chemical Engineering from The Cooper Union in 1987.
 
As an AT&T Bell Laboratories Ph.D. Scholar at Princeton University, she began research in materials chemistry, linking the importance of materials processing and microstructure with the tailoring of materials surface chemistry and energetics. She pursued research in nanocrystalline materials with Professor Herbert Gleiter at the Institute for New Materials, Saarbrücken, Germany as NSF-NATO Post-doctoral Fellow and Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow.
 
Jackie has been on the Chemical Engineering faculty at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) since 1992, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1996 and to Professor in 2001. She is currently the Executive Director of the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN), Singapore, and an Adjunct Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT.
 
IBN is a new multidisciplinary national research institute founded in March 2003 to advance the frontiers of engineering, science and medicine; it has grown to over 190 research staff and students under her leadership. Its mission is to conduct research at the interface of bioengineering and nanotechnology. By creating a knowledge base that bridges between molecular sciences and nanotechnology, IBN seeks to create novel nanostructured materials, devices and systems with unique functionalities and commercialization potential for biomedical applications.
 
Her research is interdisciplinary in nature, with a theme in the synthesis of advanced nanostructured materials for catalytic, ceramic and biomaterial applications. Her laboratory has been responsible for several novel wet-chemical and physical vapor synthesis approaches that create nanocomposites, nanoporous materials and nanodevices with unique size-dependent characteristics. These new systems are designed for applications ranging from the production of fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals, the efficient use of energy and resources, the control and prevention of environmental pollution, the targeted delivery of drugs, proteins and genes, to the generation of biomimetic implants and tissue scaffolds. She has authored over 230 articles, and presented over 250 invited lectures on this subject at international conferences.
 
Jackie has been recognized with a number of research awards, including the American Ceramic Society Ross C. Purdy Award for the most valuable contribution to the ceramic technical literature during 1993, David and Lucile Packard Fellowship, Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award, Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, Royal Academy of Engineering ICI Faculty Fellowship, American Chemical Society Faculty Fellowship Award in Solid-State Chemistry, Technology Review TR100 Young Innovator Award, American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Allan P. Colburn Award for excellence in publications, World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, and Chemical Engineering Science Peter V. Danckwerts Lectureship.
 
She was elected a member of the German National Academy of Sciences, Leopoldina in 2005, and is currently the youngest member of the Academy. She was named as one of the “One Hundred Engineers of the Modern Era” by AIChE in its Centennial Celebration, and was recently honored with the Great Woman of Our Time Award for Science and Technology by Singapore Women’s Weekly.
 
Jackie serves on the Advisory Board of the Society for Biological Engineering. She was appointed by the U.S. National Academy of Engineering in 2006 to serve on the blue-ribbon committee that identifies the grand challenges and opportunities for engineering. She was also recently appointed to the Scientific Advisory Board of Molecular Frontiers, a global think tank that promotes molecular sciences. She has actively engaged her discipline with the frontiers of inorganic materials as the Materials Engineering and Sciences Division Director of the AIChE, and organized a Topical Conference on Advanced Ceramics Processing at the 5th World Congress of Chemical Engineering.
 
She plays a leading role in the field of nanostructured materials, chaired the U.S. Department of Energy Workshop on Future Research Needs of Nanofabricated Materials (1994), and organized the Third International Conference on Nanostructured Materials (1996), the Engineering Foundation Conference on Processing and Properties of Nanostructured Materials (2000), the First and Third Society for Biological Engineering International Conference on Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (2004, 2007), and the Second Molecular Frontiers Symposium (2008).
 
Jackie is the Editor-in-Chief of Nano Today. She is Advisory Editor for Materials Today and Molecular and Supramolecular Science, and serves on the Editorial Boards of Journal of Porous Materials, Nanoparticle Science and Technology, Journal of Metastable and Nanostructured Materials, Journal of Experimental Nanoscience, Journal of Nanomaterials, Biomedical Materials: Materials for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine, Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering, Biomolecular Frontiers, International Journal of Molecular Engineering, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Nanomedicine, Letters in Organic Chemistry, Materials Science and Engineering C: Materials for Biological Applications, Journal of Biomedical Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Nano Research, and Cambridge Series in Chemical Engineering.
 
She was Editor for Advances in Chemical Engineering, Associate Editor of Acta Materialia, Scripta Materialia, and Nanostructured Materials, and Guest Editor for Materials Science & Engineering A, Nanostructured Materials, AIChE Journal, and Chemistry of Materials.
 
Jackie served on the Editorial Board of Journal of Electroceramics and Applied Catalysis A: General, the International Advisory Board of University of Queensland Nanomaterials Centre (Australia) and Leibniz-Institut für Festköper- und Werkstoffforschung Dresden (Germany), and the Board of Directors of Alexander von Humboldt Association of America. She is on the International Advisory Board of National Research Council Steacie Institute for Molecular Sciences (Canada).
 
She is an Honorary Professor of Jilin University (China) and Sichuan University (China), and an Adjunct Professor of National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). Jackie has over 110 patents issued or pending, and has served on the Advisory Boards of six start-up companies and one venture capital fund.
 
Read IBN Pioneers Breakthrough Method in Nanoparticle Synthesis, Miniature lab can detect deadly bird flu virus in 30 minutes, Technology Review: TR35, and Wunderkind from MIT is showing Singapore how nanotech is done.