Dr. Li-Qiong Wang joined the Department of Chemistry at Brown University in January 2010. Prior to Brown, she was Chief Scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) for 17 years working in the area of energy materials. At Brown, she has been using her extensive research experiences to help undergraduate teaching and research. She believes that students absorb more knowledge when they are engaged in research activities that apply new science and technology to real-world problems. Experiments in undergraduate laboratory courses offer the perfect opportunity for this real-world connection. With these philosophies in mind and through collaborative effort between faculty and students, she has developed new and engaging teaching materials and laboratory modules with real-world applications, resulting in several publications in the Journal of Chemical Education with undergraduate researchers as first authors. Dr. Wang has supervised and mentored many undergraduate students in research and independent studies including members from minority and underrepresented groups. For example, Their research results on the chemistry of pigment and ceramic glazes led to the creation of unique hands-on activities and a research project for a multi-disciplinary Chemistry and Art course that explores different chemical concepts and techniques through the lenses of art and art history. Creativity and critical thinking skills are emphasized and exercised for students in this course through inquiry and case-study-based approaches in lectures and discussions, hands-on activities, reading and writing assignments, research projects, and final papers/presentations. Furthermore, with DOE funding, her team has built a state-of-the-art hyperpolarized 129Xe NMR polarizer at Brown University, enabling investigation of the structures and porosity of novel energy, catalytic and biomaterials.
Dr. Li-Qiong Wang received her Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley in 1991. She has over 120 peer-reviewed publications. She has won several awards and recognitions, including the R&D 100 Award, the Discover Magazine Awards Finalist, and DOE's Materials Science Awards while she was Chief Scientist at PNNL. Dr. Wang has served as program co-chair in the Chemical Education Division of the American Chemical Society National Meetings.
