After short stays at NRC and Acadia University, Yu was appointed to the Department of Chemistry at Simon Fraser University in 2001 as an assistant professor and promoted to a tenured full professor in 2009. He is now a principal investigator of the CFI-funded Centre for Nanomaterials and Microstructures (4D LABS) and an associate member of the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, both at SFU. Yu has been perusing his cutting-edge research on solving fundamental problems that have direct impact on applied analytical science and technology. His innovation of adapting mobile electronics (office scanners, disc players, and now smartphones) for portable molecular analysis and his contribution to the de novo construction of ultrasensitive electronic biosensors for disease markers, lead to the possibility of performing many quantitative chemical analysis on-site and biomedical diagnostic tests at point-of-care settings. He has published more than 160 peer-reviewed articles and holds/filed 14 national/international patents.