Prof. Chih-Jen Shih

Prof. Dr. Chih-Jen Shih

Ph.D., Chemical Engineering, MIT (USA)

Chih-Jen was born in Taiwan in 1980. He received his bachelor and master degrees in chemical engineering from National Taiwan University. His master thesis focused on phase-field modeling of alloy crystallization and dendritic growth (Chung-Wen Lan group). In 2014, he obtained his PhD degree in chemical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, under supervision of Profs. Michael Strano and Daniel Blankschtein. His PhD thesis combined molecular simulations and experiments to understand 2D materials surface properties. He was then trained in the Zhenan Bao group at Stanford University during his postdoc, fabricating hybrid organic semiconductor - 2D material heterojunction devices. He joined ETH Zurich as a tenure-track assistant professor in 2015 and was tenured in 2022.  

Chih-Jen's research focuses on morphology, dynamics, molecular forces, and transport phenomena of nanomaterial and nanomolecular systems. His interest ranges from fundamental understanding of how dielectric screening of atomically thin nanomaterials influences the movement and interactions of charges, excitons, and molecules near interfaces, to application-motivated studies aimed at developing new engineering strategies to control over the interplay of these mechanisms, towards new technological opportunities in nanophotonics, optoelectronics, sensors, and actuators.

Chih-Jen has been recognized by a number of awards after being an independent PI as follows:

SNSF Consolidator Grant (2024) by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

ERC Starting Grant (2019) by the European Research Council.  

Ruzicka Prize (2017) by the Swiss Chemical Society.

Victor K. LaMer Award (2017) by the American Chemical Society.