Professor Vasilev is currently a Matthew Flinders Professor and a Professor of Biomedical Nanotechnology in the College of Medicine and Public Health at Flinders University. He is also the Director of the Biomedical Nanoengineering Laboratory, which he established after joining Flinders University. Prior to taking a position at Flinders University, Professor Vasilev had built and led at The University of South Australia (UniSA) a large and highly productive team, which grew to more than 20 postdocs and PhD students, a size of a small research centre. His team is well connected having deep collaborative networks within Australia and internationally, and is strongly engaged with industry, end users, government agencies and community.

Professor Vasilev has attracted in excess of 25M dollars in research funding from Government competitive grants and Industry, published more than 300 papers and has been awarded several prestigious Research Fellowships from ARC, NHMRC and the Humboldt Foundation, and other awards such as the John A. Brodie Medal for achievements in Chemical Engineering in 2016, the election of a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) in 2017 and a Fellow of the International Association of Advanced Materials in 2022. His contribution to UniSA has been recognised by several awards including the UniSA Research Excellence Award in the Mid-Career category (2018), and the Division of ITEE Excellence Award for Leadership in Research (2018), and the UniSA Interdisciplinary Award (2019) for his work across disciplines.

The foundation of Professor Vasilev’s research program is his revolutionary approach to the nanoengineering of plasma polymer films, which vastly expanded the opportunities for this technology. His established international reputation and leadership in his field evident (in addition to the awards mentioned above) by regular invitations to deliver plenary and keynote lectures at international conferences, and prestigious universities, institutes and companies around the world. His publications have been cited more than 12,500 times and his H-index = 63 (M-index ~ 3).

Professor Vasilev’s research has a strong translational focus. He has a track record of working with commercial partners to industrialise biomedical technologies. These include leading large commercial projects such as a $5M CRC-P project together with Motherson Australia Pty Ltd on a technology for bladder cancer diagnostics, a $6M IMCRC project with Corin Group on antibacterial surface modification for orthopaedic implants, and a $1.3M project with Anizop Holdings on antibacterial surface modification for dental implants. His translational work involving the entire spectrum of activities from research discoveries to commercial products was a key strength allowing him to win in 2020 (commenced in 2022) the prestigious and highly competitive NHMRC Investigator Award ($2,738,000 over 5 year).

Professor Vasilev is deeply involved with various research funding bodies, currently being a member (by invitation) of the Australian Research Council (ARC) Medical Research Advisory Group, NHMRC GRP (Grant Review Panel), a member of the Advisory Committee of the Australia-India Scientific Research Fund and a member of the College of Assessors of the New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment Science Funding, amongst others. He is also a member of Brandon Capital BioCatalyst Investment Review Committee