Group Leader and Australian Research Council  Future Fellow

Associate Professor, Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology

The University of Queensland, St Lucia, 4072, Brisbane

Australia

Group Website: https://aibn.uq.edu.au/qiao

Associate Professor Ruirui Qiao is a Group Leader and NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow (2021-2026) and ARC Future Fellow (2026-2030) at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN), (UQ. She received her PhD from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2014, following an MSc in 2007 and a BSc in 2005 from Peking University, China.

At AIBN, A/Prof Qiao leads a multidisciplinary research group focused on the design and engineering of functional polymer/inorganic nanohybrids and biomaterial platforms for biomedical applications, including drug and gene delivery, disease modelling, tissue engineering, antibacterial technologies, and soft robotics. Her current research includes polymer-engineered magnetic nanoparticles for precision brain delivery, droplet-engineered microgel platforms for organoid and blood–brain barrier models, and liquid metal nanoparticle-enabled soft materials for 3D/4D printing and soft robotics.

She has published more than 130 peer-reviewed journal articles in leading journals including Science, Nature Communications, Advanced Materials, ACS Nano, and the Journal of the American Chemical Society, with an h-index of 53 and more than 9,700 citations. She currently serves as an Associate Editor for Science Advances (AAAS) and the Journal of Nanobiotechnology (Spring Nature), and as a Topic Editor for Polymer Science & Technology (ACS).

Representative Publications

[1] Forgham, H., Chang, Y., ..., QIAO, R.*, The evolution of nanomedicine: The rise of next-generation nanomaterials in cancer nanomedicine, 2025, Science Advances 11 (43), eadx1576

[2] QIAO, R., Fu, C., Forgham, H., ..., Davis, T.P.*, Magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles for brain imaging and drug delivery, Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews, 2023, 197,114822

[3] Forgham, H., Zhu, J., Huang, X., ..., QIAO, R*, Multifunctional Fluoropolymer-Engineered Magnetic Nanoparticles to Facilitate Blood-Brain Barrier Penetration and Effective Gene Silencing in Medulloblastoma, Advanced Science, 2024, 11(25), 2401340

[4] Zhang, L, ... QIAO, R.*, 3D-printed liquid metal polymer composites as NIR-responsive 4D printing soft robot, Nature Communications, 2023, 14 (1), 7815

[5] Huang, X., … QIAO, R.*, 4D printing hybrid soft robots enabled by shape‐transformable liquid metal nanoparticles, Advanced Materials, 2024, 36 (46), 2409789