Dr. Sun became a Full Professor of Chemical Engineering at Edith Cowan University (ECU) in November 2017. He joined ECU in March 2016 as an Associate Professor through the global campaign of Vice-Chancellor’s Professorial Research Fellowship. Prior to that he had worked at Curtin University for over seven years, with the position of Research Fellow (Level A, 2009-2012), Curtin Research Fellow (Level B, 2013-2014) and then Senior Research Fellow (Level C, 2015-2016). He has been an Adjunct Professor at Curtin University since 2016.

His research focuses on novel catalysis (photocatalysis, photo-thermal catalysis, photo-electro-chemical catalysis, and membrane catalysis) and advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) over nanostructured materials for solar-to-chemical conversion and environmental remediation. So far he has published over 190 refereed journal papers (over 40 papers published in journals with impact factor higher than ten) and received over 12,200 citations and achieved a h-index of 69 (Data from Google Scholar in November 2019). He has also secured four million dollars funding through four ARC discovery projects, four CRC projects and two fellowships. He serves as the Associate Editor of RSC Advances, and Speciality Chief Editor of Frontiers of Nanotechnology, assessor of ARC, committee member of international conferences, and referee of international journals.