For immediate release
Berkeley, CA
The College of Chemistry is pleased to announce the addition of Dr. Rui Wang as assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (CBE) commencing January 2019. Dr. Wang’s lab will be housed in the Pitzer Center for Theoretical Chemistry. Martin Head-Gordon, Kenneth S. Pitzer Distinguished Professor of Chemistry commented, "As Director of the Pitzer Center, I am thrilled to see CBE further developing its research strengths in polymer and soft materials theory with the hiring of Rui Wang. All eight existing faculty members of the Center look forward to welcoming Rui to our community, and enjoying scientific interactions with him."
Dr. Wang received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology in 2014, where he studied interfacial properties of electrolyte/polyelectrolyte solutions. His dissertation topic was on the Effects of Self Energy of the Ions on the Double Layer Structure and Properties at the Dielectric Interface and is available online here.
Currently, he is a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has been developing topology-based models to understand and predict the properties of polymer networks. Recent research published by Dr. Wang is available here.
Research efforts in Dr. Wang’s lab will use applied theories and computational tools to investigate complex soft matter systems with multiple components and interactions. His plan is to build simple coarse-grained models at the molecular level to elucidate fundamental insights, which will then be incorporated into the framework of statistical mechanics and further solved by modern analytical and computational methods, such as field theoretical techniques, network theories, liquid-state integral equations and computer simulations. This methodology will facilitate the study of multi-component systems, compositional inhomogeneity, fluctuation effects and non-equilibrium processes.
Professor Jeffrey Reimer, Chair of CBE stated, “CBE has a long tradition in thermodynamics, starting with John Prausnitz in the 1950s. Rui continues that tradition, and I have every indication that his work will eclipse that of his predecessors!”
Visit Dr. Wang's faculty page here>