Alex Jen is currently serving as the Provost of the City University of Hong Kong. Before his current post, he was the Boeing-Johnson Chair Professor and Chair of the Department of Materials Science & Engineering at the University of Washington. He was also the Chief Scientist for the Clean Energy Institute endowed by the Washington State Governor. His research interest is focused on utilizing molecular, polymeric and biomacromolecular self-assembly to create ordered arrangement of organic and inorganic functional materials for photonics, opto-electronics, nanomedicine, and nanotechnology. He has co-authored more than 820 publications, given over 550 invited lectures. His work is well cited with more than 48,000 citations and a h-index of 112. He is also a co-inventor of more than 50 patents and invention disclosures.
For his pioneering contributions in organic photonics and electronics, he was elected as AAAS, MRS, ACS, PMSE, OSA, and SPIE Fellow. He has also been appointed as the Changjiang Endowed Chair by the Chinese Ministry of Education, as the World Class University Professor by the Korean National Research Foundation, and as the Distinguished Chair Professor by the National Taiwan University. He has also been elected as an Academician by the Washington State Academy of Sciences.