Prof Zhao Yanli: The Value of Doing Your Own Thing

Prof Zhao Yanli, faculty in the School of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology (CCEB), is the winner of the 2025 College of Engineering Research Award. This award recognises the past three years of an NTU engineering faculty member’s trailblazing research.

When Prof Zhao Yanli arrived at NTU in 2010 as a junior faculty member, he was both a foreigner and a new father.

“I had pressure from the tenure track. I was building a lab and teaching all while my kids were young,” admitted Zhao. He felt he had no choice from the outset but to succeed.

While he credits his team and extended family for supporting him and his lab’s research, the belief that failure wasn’t an option also drove his career.

It certainly set the pace. To date, he’s authored over 600 scientific papers, filed for 11 patents, supervised over 70 graduate student (including visiting graduate students) and around 100 research staff. As if that weren’t enough, he also serves as Executive Editor of ACS Applied Nano Materials and the Associate Chair for Graduate Education and Research at NTU School of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology.

“The best piece of advice I’ve ever received was from my postdoc supervisor, the Nobel Prize winning Prof Sir Fraser Stoddart. He told me quite simply ‘do your own thing.’ It was the words I needed to hear to explore work that has never been done,” said Zhao.

Today that work involves supramolecular chemistry, designing nanomaterials held together by non-covalent interactions. His research focuses on creating porous materials with unique properties that can be used for drug storage and delivery. Their inherent porosity allows for efficient drug loading, and they can be engineered to target specific cells.

The applications cross over many diseases, but cancer treatment stands as the primary focus. By better targeting tumours with precisely designed nanomaterials, Zhao's discoveries can work more effectively while reducing side effects, like those notoriously associated with chemotherapy.

Currently, his work is in animal trials.

If Zhao’s track record is any indication, there’s much more yet to come. He aims to translate at least one of his discoveries into real-world medical applications, and he plans to do it from NTU.

“I still have about 20 years to go before retirement,” he mused.

 

To learn more about Prof Zhao’s work visit his research page.

You can also read more about the other  2025 CoE Award winners. 

Story by Laura Dobberstein, NTU College of Engineering