Binghe Wang PhD

Binghe Wang was born in 1962 in Beijing, China. In 1966, at the beginning of the so-called Cultural Revolution, his whole family was sent to the countryside in Hebei Province. Therefore, he spent his formative years interacting with people who were not the most fortunate but maintained some of the most optimistic views on life. The hard life in the countryside taught him many lessons that proved very useful later on in life. In 1978 when China re-opened its universities, he was admitted into Beijing Medical College (now Beijing University Health Sciences Center) where he met his wife, Siming. After receiving his B.S. degree in Medicinal Chemistry, he started his graduate career first at the University of British Columbia, Department of Chemistry. Still longing for a career in medicinal chemistry, he later transferred to the University of Kansas, which has one of the best medicinal chemistry programs in the world. While at the University of Kansas working under the guidance of the late Professor Matt Mertes and Professor Kristin Bowman-James, he studied thymidylate synthase, a target enzyme for cancer chemotherapy, and the design and synthesis of molecular catalysts. After receiving his Ph.D. degree, he worked with Professors Victor Hruby at the University of Arizona and Ronald T. Borchardt at the University of Kansas before embarking on his own independent academic career in 1994 at the University of Oklahoma College of Pharmacy as an assistant professor of medicinal chemistry. He moved to North Carolina State University as an assistant professor of chemistry in 1996 and was tenured in 2000. In 2003, he was recruited to the position of Professor and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Drug Discovery at Georgia State University. In 2009, he founded the Center for Diagnostics and Therapeutics and has been serving as its founding director. He served as the Chemistry Department Chair between 2011-2014, Associate Dean for Natural and Computational Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences 2from 014-2017, interim dean in 2016, and Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies 2017-2018. He was named Regents’ Professor in 2013.