Zhen-Gang Wang received his B.Sc. from Beijing (Peking) University (1982), and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago (1987), both in chemistry. After postdoctoral research first at Exxon Research and Engineering Company and then at University of California, Los Angeles, he joined the chemical engineering faculty at the California Institute of Technology, where he is currently the Dick and Barbara Dickinson Professor and Executive Officer of Chemical Engineering.
Zhen-Gang Wang’s research is the theoretical and computational study of structure, phase behavior, interfacial properties, and dynamics of polymers and soft matter. His earlier work focused on understanding the nature of anisotropic fluctuations in microphase separated AB block copolymers, elucidating the sequence dependence in the morphology of ABC triblock copolymers, and exploring nucleation in phase transitions involving polymeric systems. His more recent interest involves charged systems, including polyelectrolytes, salt-doped polymers and liquid mixtures, and ionic liquids, where he has made insightful contributions elucidating the effects of ion solvation and electrostatic correlations on the thermodynamics of these systems.
Wang was a recipient of the Henry and Camille Dreyfus New Faculty Award, the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, the Alfred P. Sloan Award, and the AIChE Braskem Award for Excellence in Materials Engineering and Science. In addition, he was awarded the Richard P. Feynman Prize for Excellence in Teaching at Caltech. He is a Fellow of American Physical Society. Wang has served on the editorial advisory boards of several international scientific journals and is currently an associate editor for the ACS Journal Macromolecules.