Ji-Xin Cheng

Cheng was born in Jixi, Anhui Province, P. R. China in 1971. He attended University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) from 1989 to 1994 and received a Guo MoRuo Prize, the highest award for undergraduates at USTC. His PhD study from 1994 to 1998, under the supervision of Qingshi Zhu at USTC, was awarded with President Special Scholarship. As a graduate student, he worked as a research assistant at Universite Paris-sud (France) and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). After postdoctoral training in Yijing Yan’s group at HKUST and Sunney Xie’s group at Harvard University, Cheng joined Purdue University in 2003 as an Assistant Professor in Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2009.

Dr. Cheng’s research develops label-free optical imaging tools and novel nanotechnologies for challenging applications in biomedicine such as early detection of aggressive tumor and early nerve repair after traumatic spinal cord injury. Professor Cheng’s outstanding capability in identifying significant scientific problems enabled him to maintain a highly productive and collaborative research program. In total he has authored in over 140 peer-reviewed articles that have been cited more than 6500 times, with an h-index of 40. His innovative research has also led to two US patents (6809 814 B2, 6 108 081) on coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) microscopy and one US patent (US2011/0261349A1) on multimodal nonlinear optical microscopy. More recently his lab invented a vibrational photoacoustic microscope for bond-selective imaging of deep tissue and a nanomedicine approach to early repair of spinal cord injury.

Dr. Cheng’s research is recognized by over 100 invited talks in national and international conferences such as the Gordon Conference and the Cold Spring Harbor Asia Conference. As a pioneer of his field, Dr. Cheng has delivered 5 keynote speeches in the NSF Center for Biophotonics and four international workshops on coherent Raman microscopy in different countries (US, Canada, Sweden, France and UK). Dr. Cheng is the primary editor (co-editor: Sunney Xie at Harvard) of the first book on “Coherent Raman Microscopy”, published in 2012. Dr. Cheng’s leadership in development and applications of nonlinear optical microscopy is also recognized by many invited review articles in high-impact journals including Applied Spectroscopy (2007), IEEE J. Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics (2008), Photochemistry and Photobiology (2009), Vibrational Spectroscopy (2009), Journal of Lipid Research (2010), Materials Today (2011), Laser & Photonics Review (2011), Annual Review of Materials Research (2012).

Dr. Cheng’s high-standard research has been appreciated by federal funds including NSF0416785-MCB (single PI), NSF0828832 (single PI), R21GM104681 (lead PI), R21EB015901 (lead PI), R21EB4966 (single PI), R21EB9459 (co-PI), R01HL078715 (co-PI), R01EB7243 (lead PI), R01CA129287 (co-PI), R03CA128111 (co-PI), F32HL089074 (PI), STTR R43 (co-PI), USDA, DOD spinal cord injury program, and DOD Breast Cancer Program. He also sequestered foundation funds from American Heart Association, Showalter Foundation, Coulter Foundation, Walther Foundation, and industrial funds from L’Oreal and Roche. Since he joined the Purdue faculty in Aug 2003, he has brought over $ 6.2 million research funds to the University.

Dr. Cheng’s achievements have been recently recognized by Purdue University Faculty Scholar (2012-2017), Purdue University College of Engineering Early Career Research Award (2011), Research Excellence Award from Purdue Center for Cancer Research (2011), and an Outstanding Young Scientist Award from Chinese National Academy of Sciences (2009).

Dr. Cheng’s leadership activities are manifested as the organizer and/or Chair of 16 national/international symposia. In particular, Dr. Cheng initiated a biennial Telluride Workshop “Frontier and Challenges in Laser-based Microscopy” in the first week of August 2011. The workshop was well appreciated by a total of 28 invited speakers from 7 countries. In July 14-16 of 2011, Dr. Cheng successfully organized an international training workshop on Multimodal Nonlinear Optical Microscopy, held in Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering. The workshop attracted 80 academic and industrial participants from 4 different countries.

Dr. Cheng has also been active in the entrepreneurial realm. He currently holds three US patents and two PCT applications. The CARS microscope, for which he is a primary inventor, has been commercialized by two big microscope companies (Olympus and Leica). Supported by the translational research grant from Coulter Foundation, Dr. Cheng has organized a team including himself, a clinical collaborator, a business advisor, and a tech-transfer officer toward clinic use of nanomedicine for nerve repair. Dr. Cheng is currently a fellow of the Entrepreneurial Leadership Academy at Discovery Park, where his project is to foster commercialization of vibrational photoacoustic microscopy recently invented by the Cheng lab.    

Dr. Cheng has taken an active role in teaching course at both graduate and undergraduate levels. He has designed and taught a graduate level course “Biomedical Optics” every year since 2003. He also teaches a major BME undergraduate course “Biomedical Instrumentation” every fall semester. Additionally, Dr. Cheng has participated in the development of BME295 and Senior Design courses. Dr. Cheng has mentored and graduated 8 Ph.D. and 2 M.S. from his research group. Additionally he has guided 16 undergraduates for research.  

Dr. Cheng has been a referee of multiple journals including Nature Methods, Nature Communications, Nature Chemical Biology, PNAS, Nano Lett, Phys Rev Lett, Opt Lett, JACS and others. Dr. Cheng has been served on 6 NIH review panels. He also reviewed grants for NSF and DOE. He is currently on the editorial board of Vibrational Spectroscopy and Journal of Analytical and Bioanalytical Techniques. At Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, Dr. Cheng chaired the admission committee from 2005 to 2007. During that period he led the development of a quantitative scoring and screening system. From 2005 to 2006, Dr. Cheng initiated the effort of reducing course load for BME graduate students. He currently serves on the BME graduate committee and College of Engineering Faculty Affairs Committee.