Lei Nie completed his PhD (2013) from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and after that, received three years of postdoctoral training at Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering (CAS, China) and Free University of Berlin (Germany). He began his research as an independent PI at Xinyang Normal University (China) in 2017. He worked as a senior researcher at KU Leuven (Belgium) in 2019 and has been a visiting professor at Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium) since 2022. His main research interests include biopolymers, drug delivery, hydrogels, 3D bioprinting, and tissue engineering.