Jiajing received her BS in chemistry from Fudan University in 2014. As an undergraduate, she worked on microfluidic and paper-based analytical devices under the guidance of Professor Baohong Liu. Following graduation, she came to the University of Chicago to join the inaugural class of the PhD program in molecular engineering.
Plasmonics has attracted a great deal of interest over the past two decades because of its potential applications in energy, photonics, sensing, and many other fields. Despite the fundamental breakthroughs and exciting science it has produced, it has not been practically useful due to the lack of straightforward methods for fabricating plasmonic nanostructures with sufficiently high yield and efficiency. To address this problem, Jiajing is using bottom-up chemical modification, combined with top-down lithography, to direct the assembly of the plasmonic nanoparticles. She is also exploring the application potential of the assembled nanoparticles by incorporating them into a sensitive, selective, and portable DNA detection device.
