Profile
Jiawen Li
- Associate Investigator
- University of Adelaide
- jiawen.li01@adelaide.edu.au
Dr Jiawen Li is an inventor and highly adaptable engineer leading the intravascular imaging program at the Institute of Photonics and Advanced Sensing (IPAS). Her innovation has led to her being selected as Fellow of NHMRC, National Heart Foundation and L’Oréal-UNESCO. She has won numerous prestigious awards and honours (including Superstar of STEM, Australian Optical Society Early Career Researcher Prize, National Heart Foundation Innovation Award, Women in Innovation SA Award, InDaily’s 40 Under 40 Award). She has also secured >$3 million research funding as the lead chief investigator (CIA).
Jiawen and her team are developing ultrathin, flexible, multimodal fibre-optic imaging probes that will enable cross-sectional visualisation of vascular arteries with high resolution, molecular contrast, and sensitivity that are not possible with any other existing technologies. This cutting-edge tool will underpin biological studies to help answer fundamental questions at cellular level of how plaques evolve, how they cause heart attacks, and how they respond to different treatment.
Dr Jiawen Li is a highly adaptable engineer. She uses her expertise in optical engineering to build hair-sized endoscopes to explore the nooks and crannies of the body’s organs, leading to early and accurate diagnoses of various diseases. She believes that convergence of knowledge leads to innovations. She is inventor on three patents, and has won numerous prestigious awards (including Australian Optical Society Early Career Researcher Prize, Young Tall Poppy, South Australia’s 40 Under 40 Award, Women in Innovation Award, etc.).