Jianzhong Du received his PhD in chemistry in 2004 from Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) under the supervision of Prof. Yongming Chen.  He worked with Prof. Steve Armes at the University of Sheffield (2004-2008), Prof. Rachel O’Reilly at the University of Cambridge and the University of Warwick (2008-2010) as a research fellow. He was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at TU-Chemnitz in Germany with Prof Werner A. Goedel in 2006. He was appointed as an 'Eastern Scholar' professor at Tongji University in Shanghai in 2009, and adjunct Professor in Shanghai Tenth People’s Hospital in 2015. At present he is head of department of polymeric materials, Tongji University.

His PhD thesis was awarded ‘The Top 50 PhD Dissertations in CAS’ in 2005 and ‘The Nominated National Top 100 PhD Dissertations in China’ in 2006. He was awarded Pujiang talent of Shanghai, New century excellent  talents in universities of ministry of education in 2010, Best supervisor of Tongji University (2013), National award for contribution of creative talents of returned overseas Chinese (2014), National award for the progress in science and technology (2016), Outstanding supervisor of the grand prize winner of the 15th “challenge cup” extracurricular academic and technological competition for undergraduates in Shanghai, and national second class prize winner (2017), Excellent PhD thesis supervisor of Chinese composite materials society (2017), Innovative research article award for in polymer science, Chinese chemical society (2017).

His research interests focus on the synthesis, characterization, and  application of amphiphilic, stimuli-responsive polymers and useful self-assembled  polymer nanomaterials such as vesicles, cylinders and micelles. He also  has wide interests in the interdisciplinary bridging between polymer science,  biomedicine, biocatalysis and materials science, such as controlled drug delivery, gene  delivery, antibacterial materials, theranostic vesicles, and treatment of diabetes, etc.