Dr. Zhenpeng Qin
- Professor of Mechanical Engineering
- Eugene McDermott Distinguished Professor
The McDermott Professorships were established in August 2017, funded by an anonymous gift, with the goal of providing early career support and recognition to faculty members who have established extraordinary records of research productivity, teaching excellence and university service, and who show promise of being leaders of the UT Dallas faculty in the future.
“The human brain is a complex scientific and medical challenge. We are working on nanomaterial technologies to better understand, diagnose and treat brain dysfunction. The McDermott Professorship and the collaborative environment at UT Dallas and UT Southwestern Medical Center will support our efforts to achieve this goal.”
Dr. Zhenpeng Qin uses mechanical engineering to solve challenges in medicine.
He and his team of researchers in his NanoBioengineering Laboratory at The University of Texas at Dallas develop nanotechnology-based approaches to understand the brain better, to deliver and release medicine in the brain and to diagnose infectious diseases. The lab is affiliated with UT Dallas’ Center for Advanced Pain Studies, of which Qin is a founding member.
Qin has led the development of technologies that include a more accurate rapid test for diagnosing infectious diseases, a technique to open the blood-brain barrier temporarily to deliver medication to the brain, and tools that make it possible to study how neuropeptides affect brain circuits and how they affect behavior in real time. He and partners launched Avsana Labs, of which he is president, to commercialize the rapid infectious disease test technology through UT Dallas’ Venture Development Center.
“Ultimately, we want to develop platforms to better diagnose infectious diseases and tools to treat brain diseases,” Qin said.
Qin joined UT Dallas’ Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science in 2015. In addition to his primary appointment in mechanical engineering, he is an affiliated faculty member in UTD’s Department of Bioengineering and an adjunct faculty member in UT Southwestern Medical Center’s Department of Surgery.
His research has been funded by the American Heart Association; Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas; Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs; National Institutes of Health; and the National Science Foundation among others.
Qin has received numerous honors for his research, including the 2022 Y.C. Fung Early Career Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He earned a PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of Minnesota in 2014, a Master of Science in mechanical engineering from The University of Akron in 2009, and a Bachelor of Science in energy and power engineering from Xi’an Jiaotong University in 2007.