ASU's Wang Wins American Chemistry Society's Electrochemist of the Year Award

Joe Caspermeyer, Media Relations Manager & Science Editor
(480) 727-0369 | joseph.caspermeyer@asu.edu

Joseph Wang, director of the Center for Bioelectronics and Biosensors in the Biodesign Institute at ASU, is the 2006 recipient of the American Chemical Society (ACS) Division of Analytical Chemistry Cole Parmer Award in Electrochemistry.

"This ACS award adds to many well-deserved honors that Joe Wang has received in recognition of his research excellence," said George Poste, director of the Biodesign Institute. "He is an international leader in electrochemistry and his innovative research has contributed greatly toward the advancement of biosensor technology for purposes of human health monitoring, environmental sensing and national security."

Wang is an academic triple threat at ASU, having been recruited in 2004 to the Biodesign Institute to lead a new center and serving a joint appointment as professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering (CME) at the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering and the Department of Chemistry in the School of Life Sciences.

"Joe Wang is one of the most creative scientists I have known in my technical life," said CME chair Subhash Mahajan. "His understanding and intuition of electrochemistry is so excellent that he can apply to it to a multitude of technologies. He can reduce complex problems to an aggregation of simple ones, resulting in sophisticated biosensors and nanowires with unique properties."

The research interests of Dr. Wang include the development of microfluidic ("lab-on-chip") devices, biosensors, DNA recognition and diagnostics, and nanomaterials-based sensors that can operate at the scale of single molecule detection limits.

"Joe Wang has been a pioneer in the development and use of electrochemistry in sensor technology, which is used in an enormous number of chemical, medical and environmental applications," said chemistry department chair Bob Blankenship. "This very prestigious national American Chemical Society award is an acknowledgment of his enormous contributions in these areas."

ACS Award recipients are honored for advancing the field of electrochemical analysis by criteria that include developing unique instrumentation, discovering fundamental events or processes, and authoring important books and research papers that have had a profound influence on the field.

At its core, electrochemistry is a field that combines the intimate interplay between electricity and chemistry. Wang has continually pushed the boundaries of his field by making new discoveries and applications that rely on a fundamental understanding of the relationship between the different electrical properties of molecules, such as current, charge or potential, and their chemical nature.

"Such use of electrical measurements for analytical purposes has found a vast range of applications, including environmental monitoring, industrial quality control, and biomedical analysis," Wang wrote in the latest edition of his advanced undergraduate and graduate textbook, Analytical Electrochemistry.

Sensors developed from these basic electrical and chemical measurements can often speed up and automate sample handling and measurement, eliminating the need for cumbersome and tedious sample collecting or preparation methods. With wireless technologies improving, more and more remote sampling and monitoring applications are increasing.

During his career, Wang has authored 685 papers, 7 books and 24 chapters and received 14 patents to his credit, including involvement in the development of the first noninvasive biosensor for diabetes, the Food and Drug Adminstration (FDA) approved Gluco Watch, which monitors glucose levels through human sweat.

Wang also joins the ranks of only a very select few who have been doubly honored by the ACS. In 1999, he was the recipient of the ACS Award for Chemical Instrumentation.

"It is very gratifying and a great honor to be recognized by one’s peers and the award committee as there are many other deserving candidates," said Wang.

In addition, Wang’s prolific publication record was recognized last year with the top ranked cited researcher in the field of engineering (out of 5537 authors) and the fifth most cited in chemistry (out of a total of 5,977 authors) for research papers published over the last decade. The data was gathered from the Institute for Scientific Information’s (ISI) Essential Science Indicators from 1995-2005.

Research citations is a measure scientific performance and to track trends in science, and is among several metrics which are indicative of an authors stature in a given field. Wang, also received a special ISI Citation Laureate for his performance from 1991-2001 and was given an award in 1995 as the most cited electrochemist in the world. He is currently serving as the chief-editor of the international journal Electroanalysis and has been a member of the Advisory Editor Board of 14 other international journals.

In recognition of Wang’s achievement, a symposium in his honor will be held at the annual ACS meeting in San Francisco from September 10-14, 2006.