Zhen-Gang Wang Elected to the National Academy of Engineering

Zhen-Gang Wang, Caltech's Dick and Barbara Dickinson Professor of Chemical Engineering and executive officer for chemical engineering, has been elected to membership in the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). The 2025 class, which includes 128 new members and 22 international members, was announced on February 11.

According to the NAE's press release, Wang was elected to membership "for unifying theories of thermodynamic and transport properties of polymers to predict phase behavior, self-assembly, and nucleation."

Wang's research relies on statistical mechanics to bridge the gap between the microscopic—the characteristics of molecules—and the macroscopic: how everything from fluids to gels to polymers behave under various conditions. Though Wang's statistical and computational efforts may seem complex, he says his lab's research is guided by a quote from Josiah Willard Gibbs, a 19th-century American physicist and one of the founders of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics: "One of the principal objects of theoretical research . . . is to find the point of view from which the subject appears in its greatest simplicity." Beginning with the big picture, Wang relies on statistical mechanics to work his way back to the details of a problem.

Wang earned his bachelor's degree in chemistry from Beijing University in 1982 and a PhD in chemistry from the University of Chicago in 1987. A member of the Caltech faculty since 1991, Wang has received numerous honors and awards including Caltech's Richard P. Feynman Prize for Excellence in Teaching in 2008.

Three Caltech alumni were also named to the 2025 class of members: Charles Crouse (PhD '74), principal engineer at AECOM, a civil engineering firm in Seattle; Julie Sheridan Eng (BS '89), chief technology officer for Coherent Corp. of Los Altos, California, which manufactures optical instruments and semiconductors; and Subbaiah Malladi (PhD '80), chief technical officer and principal engineer for Exponent, a scientific and engineering consulting firm in Menlo Park, California.

The class of 2025 will be formally inducted during a ceremony at NAE's annual meeting on October 5.