Given the severely toxic effects of heavy metals on living systems and the environment in general, identifying and quantifying heavy metal ions in synthetic samples and in vivo are highly significant activities. One such heavy metal, cadmium, allows only a low level of tolerable exposure and can thus have fatal consequences or cause critical health problems such as ostial disorders, nephrotic syndromes, various types of cancer even in extremely low concentrations. Although several standard techniques for detecting cadmium have been used, including atomic absorption and emission spectroscopy and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry, all of them require complex instruments that are also expensive, timeconsuming to use, and hardly portable. For that reason, sensitive, selective, less labourintensive methods of detecting cadmium ions are greatly needed. In response, fluorogenic or chromogenic methods afford high analyte sensitivity and selectivity, easy sample preparation, and easy monitoring, all with affordable instrumentation. Against that background, this thesis reports the design, synthesis, and development of a fluorescent molecular sensor that can detect Cd2+ ions within spectroscopic behavior and living cells. In the design, based on the mechanism of intramolecular charge transfer (ICT), borondipyrromethene (BODIPY) dye was used as a signal reporter due to its unique properties, and di-(2-picolyl)amine (DPA) was chosen to represent the recognition unit. Altogether, the sensor offers rapid response, high selectivity, and high sensitivity in detecting Cd ions is reversible with the aid of CN- and can be used to efficiently image Cd2+ species in vitro.