Professor Song spent three years of fellowships at University of Glasgow and University of Munich awarded by the Royal Society and Alexander von Humboldt foundation after his PhD. He then worked at Lund University as a Swedish Natural Science Research Council Open Postdoc and then a guest lecturer. He moved to Manchester as a Lecturer in 2002, and became Professor of Nanoelectronics in 2006. His research is to explore novel nanodevice concepts, particularly ultra-high-speed, zero-threshold nano-diodes, for printed electronics as well as energy harvesting. He received a Royal Society Brian Mercer Feasibility Award and Distinguished Achievement Medal for "Researcher of the Year" of the University of Manchester.

The Organic Materials Innovation Centre (OMIC) is a University Innovation Centre for the speciality organic materials and polymer industries based at the University of Manchester. The centre was established in 2004 with support from the UK Government. It is an independently managed partnership between industry and academia to help businesses to innovate and grow through collaborative R&D projects. OMIC has considerable expertise in the discovery, development and characterisation of new organic materials, for example conjugated oligomers, soluble oligoacenes, conjugated liquid crystals and semiconducting / conducting polymers. In addition OMIC has expertise in the processing, using ink-jet technology, of the novel semi-conducting and conducting polymers into a wide range of devices on a diverse range of substrates. Since 2009 OMIC has been a major partner in the Knowledge Centre for Materials Chemistry (KCMC).