Yan Qingfeng received his Ph.D degree in solid state electronics and microelectronics in 2003 from the Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences (Beijing, China). He joined the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at National University of Singapore as a postdoctoral research fellow, carrying out research on the fabrication of nanostructured materials using both  top-down  semiconductor micromachining and  bottom-up  self-assembly methods. From April 2006, he holds a Joint Postdoctoral Associate position at the School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His recent research interests focus on the growth of colloidal crystal and their application in emerging areas such as photonics, phononics, nanofabrications, etc.