Professor Du is currently a tenure-track assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and leads the Nanobiosensing, Nanomanufacturing, and Nanomaterials (3N) Lab. He also holds appointments in the microsystems engineering and school of chemistry and materials science. Before joining RIT in 2018, he was a postdoctoral researcher in the chemistry department at the University of California-Berkeley working for Richard A. Mathies.

Currently, Du’s research group at RIT has been studying the interactions between biomolecules and nanostructures at the single-molecule level to enhance biomarker trapping and sensing. He has over thirty journal articles in ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, Analytical Chemistry, Advanced Functional Materials, ACS Nano, Applied Physics Letters, ACS Sensors, Biosensors and Bioelectronics, Chemistry of Materials, Diagnostics, Langmuir, Nanotechnology, Electrophoresis, and Small. His research work at RIT has been widely covered by Science Daily, CEP Magazine, Yahoo Finance, The Science Times, Photonics Media, and EurekAlert.

Professor Du has been recognized as one of the twenty-five global rising stars in sensing by ACS Sensors, a special issue celebrating early stage investigators. He has also been the recipient of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund (BWF) Collaborative Travel Grant (2019), the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Student Fellowship (2012), James H. Potter Award (2014), and Innovation & Entrepreneur (IE) Fellowship (2009–2014). He was the only recipient worldwide of the 2017 Biosensors Travel Award and one of only two recipients worldwide of the 2017 Micromachines Travel Award. Du’s research is supported by BWF, the Department of Energy, UR Clinical & Translational Science Institute, and industry.