He received his BSc from Sichuan University in 1984, MSc from Nanjing University in 1987, and PhD from Brown University in 1996 all in chemistry. Before joining Brown, he was a postdoctoral fellow and a research staff at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center from 1996 to 2004. His research interest is in chemical synthesis, self-assembly of monodisperse nanoparticles and their potential applications in biomagnetics, nanocomposites, information storage, and catalysis.