Yuping Shi

Yuping earned DPhil in Engineering Science from Oxford University (supervisors: Prof. Donal Bradley CBE FRS and Prof. Stephen Morris), with his whole Ph.D. study being financially supported by the prestigious full-cost Hong Kong Jockey Club Graduate Scholarship at the University of Oxford (known as JC-Oxford Scholar). He served as a Junior Tutor in Oxford University St Cross College during the last two years of his Ph.D. study, and also became a proud recipient of Rank Prize Optoelectronic Covid-19 Response Grant in 2021. Dr. Shi has been contributing as an active reviewer for the journals such as Advanced Materials, Advanced Functional Materials and Applied Physics Letters.

His Oxford Ph.D. Thesis has pioneered polymer alignment research by exploring and optimising photoalignment and spatial patterning of polymer chain orientation using macroscopic linearly polarised light excitation and two-photon femtosecond direct (infrared) laser writing, respectively. Through access to the intrinsic structural, coupling and transport anisotropy, this newly developed photoalignment technology results in the long-sought fabrication of large-area-extended polymer crystals, whilst also ensuring a new degree of freedom to finely tune charge/energy transfer pathway, light emission, and dielectric/optical modulation in polymeric and molecular semiconductors. The fundamental research of such kind enables greater design flexibility to enrich or disrupt the established and emerging technologies, e.g. light-harvesting, polarised LEDs, organic thin-film transistors and thermoelectrics, photonic circuits, and semi-artificial photosynthesis. Please refer to an earlier news report by Oxford University in recognition of research breakthrough made by Yuping in achieving ultrahigh-quality photoalignment and sub-micron resolution spatial patterning of conjugated polymers.

Immediately after the completion of his Oxford study, Dr. Shi moved to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and University of California, Berkeley, joining the famous research group of Prof. Graham Fleming (US NAS, FRS) as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow as to expand his expertise in the field of multidimensional ultrafast spectroscopy for the study of charge/energy transfer dynamics in both synthetic semiconductors and naturally occurring photosynthetic proteins. Thereafter, the state-of-the-art two-dimensional electronic-vibrational spectroscopy and quantum light spectroscopy, together with various established time-resolved spectroscopic techniques, have been utilized in his research projects towards elucidating involved photo-biochemical dynamics and temporospatial quantum effects.

Currently working with Prof. Katharina Landfester in Max Planck Institute since May 2023, Dr. Yuping Shi focuses on developing and applying red-shifted conjugated copolymers as highly efficient photobiocatalysts and selective artificial photoenzymes in a rich range of applications, with prominent examples including photobiocatalysis in artificial cells and living systems, tumor phototherapy, cell-mimicking, bio-imaging/sensing, light-to-fuel conversion, flexible electronics, and single-molecular quantum engineering science.