Zijing Lin received his BS in physics from the Hangzhou University in 1983 and a Ph. D. in condensed matter physics from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1989. He was a research associate at the Clausthal Technology University from 1989 to 1990 and a visiting scientist at the Julich Research Center from 1990-1992. From 1993 to 1994, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of New Brunswick. He was a research scientist from 1994 to 1997 and a contract senior scientist from 1997 to 2000 at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. He joined the University of Science and Technology of China as a full professor in 2000 and started working as a principle investigator for the Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale (HFNL) when it was created in 2003.