Ji-Xin Cheng Receives 2022 Innovator of the Year Award
Professor Ji-Xin Cheng recently received the 2022 BU Innovator of the Year Award, which recognizes an outstanding faculty member who has translated world-class research into an invention or innovation that benefits humankind.
Ji-Xin Cheng is professor of biomedical engineering and electrical & computer engineering and inaugural Theodore Moustakas Chair Professor in Photonics and Optoelectronics with a joint appointment in Chemistry at Boston University. He is authored in over 300 peer-reviewed articles with an h-index of 92 (Google Scholar). Chemical microscopes based on his innovations, including CARS, hyperspectral SRS, mid-infrared photothermal, are installed and used in many countries worldwide. His research has been supported by ~$40 million funding from federal agencies including the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, and private foundations including the Keck Foundation. In 2014, he co-founded Vibronix Inc., which is devoted to vibration-based imaging technologies and medical device innovations. In 2019, he co-founded Pulsethera, aiming to kill superbugs by photolysis of intrinsic chromophores.
Cheng is a Fellow of Optical Society of America, a Fellow of American Institute of Medicine and Biological Engineering, and associate editor of Science Advances. Cheng initiated the inaugural Gordon Research Conference on Chemical Imaging, to be held in Easton, MA in August 2023. Among his honors, Cheng received the 2020 Pittsburg Spectroscopy Award from the Spectroscopy Society of Pittsburg, the 2019 Ellis R. Lippincott Award from OSA, Society for Applied Spectroscopy, Coblentz Society, the 2016 Research Award from Purdue University College of Engineering, and the 2015 Craver Award from Coblentz Society.
Cheng earned his PhD in chemistry from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1998. As a graduate student, he worked as a research assistant at Universite Paris-sud (France) on vibrational spectroscopy and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology on quantum dynamics theory. After postdoctoral training on ultrafast spectroscopy at HKUST, he joined Sunney Xie’s group at Harvard University as a postdoc, where he spearheaded the development of CARS microscopy that allows high-speed vibrational imaging. Cheng joined Purdue University in 2003 as assistant professor in the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering and Department of Chemistry, promoted to associate professor in 2009 and full professor in 2013, before joining BU in the summer of 2017.
Learn more about guidelines for the Innovator of the Year Award here.