Professor Zhugen Yang leads the UKCRIC-funded Sensors Lab at Cranfield University, where his team develops low-cost, rapid point-of-use sensing technologies for environmental monitoring, public health (including wastewater epidemiology for infectious diseases), and biomedical diagnostics. He began his independent academic career with a UK NERC Fellowship in 2018, previously served as a Lecturer at University of Glasgow, and moved to Cranfield in 2019, becoming Senior Lecturer (2022) and Professor (2023). He completed postdoctoral research at University of Cambridge and was a Marie Curie Fellow at University of Bath after earning his PhD in Micro and Nanotechnology at University of Lyon. His research has attracted over £20 million in funding, produced 120+ publications, patents, and international keynote talks, and has been featured in major media including BBC News and The Washington Post.