Physicist Wang Enge Appointed President Of Peking University

Wang Enge, PhD ’90, a physicist and member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has succeeded outgoing President Zhou Qifeng as president of Peking University.

AsianScientist (Mar. 25, 2013) – Wang Enge, PhD ’90, a physicist and member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), has succeeded outgoing President Zhou Qifeng as president of Peking University.

The decision, issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council, was announced at a gathering of PKU teaching and administrative staff on March 22.

Wang, 56, is the 17th president of the university since 1912, when it changed its name from Jingshi Daxuetang, or the Imperial University of Peking, to Beijing Daxuexiao with Yan Fu as president.

Wang Enge was named executive vice president in June 2012.

A native of Shenyang, northeast China’s Liaoning Province, Wang graduated in theoretical physics from Liaoning University in 1982 and obtained his Ph.D. in condensed matter physics from the PKU Physics Department in 1990.

Prior to his position as a researcher at the CAS Institute of Physics in 1995, Wang was an exchange student at Princeton University, a postdoctoral fellow at the L’Institut d’Electronique de Microélectronique et de Nanotechnologie, and a research scientist at the University of Houston.

He was director of the CAS Institute of Physics from 1999 to 2007, director the Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics from 2004 to 2009, executive vice president of the CAS Graduate University, and deputy general secretary of CAS from 2008 to 2009.

Professor Wang returned to PKU in 2009, and served dean of the School of Physics and of the Graduate School until 2011, when he was appointed provost and vice president for teaching and research.

Wang was elected as a member of CAS in 2007, the top honor for a Chinese scientist. He has been a member of the World Academy of Sciences for the Advancement of Science in Developing Countries (then named Academy of Sciences for the Developing World) since 2008 and a fellow of the American Physical Society since 2006.

A researcher on surface physics, Wang’s approach is a combination of atomistic simulation of nonequilibrium growth and chemical vapor deposition of light-element nanomaterials. The study primarily involves formation and decay mechanisms of surface-based novel structures. Wang’s research also covers water behaviors in confinement.

Wang has published over 260 papers in peer-reviewed journals including Science, Nature, PRL, and JACS; delivered over 70 keynote, plenary, and invited talks; and held five patents. His publications have been cited over 5,000 times with h-index of 36.

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Source: PKU.
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