UCLA Electrical Engineering Professor Named National Academy of Inventors Fellow

Kang Wang, a distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, has been named a National Academy of Inventors (NAI) fellow, the highest professional distinction awarded to academic inventors.

The academy recognizes global researchers who have “demonstrated a spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development and the welfare of society.” Wang has been selected for the dozens of inventions he has patented over the course of his career.

A UCLA faculty member since 1979, Wang holds the Raytheon Chair in Electrical Engineering, leads the Device Research Laboratory and co-directs the Center of Quantum Science and Engineering. His primary research focuses on quantum matters, information and technologies, semiconductors, and nanoelectronics and spintronics. He also holds faculty appointments in materials science and engineering, as well as physics and astronomy.

Wang has received many international accolades for his research, including the 2018 Magnetism Award and Néel Medal from the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, and the 2017 J.J. Ebers Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (IEEE) Electron Devices Society. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and IEEE, a Guggenheim Fellow and a member of Academia Sinica in Taiwan.

The National Academy of Inventors includes fellows from more than 250 academic institutions around the world, all of whom have earned their fellowships through years of dedication to their research. The 2022 class of 169 new fellows from 110 research universities and governmental and nonprofit research institutes worldwide will be inducted June 27 at the 12th annual meeting of the National Academy of Inventors in Washington, D.C.

Riley de Jong contributed to this story.