Dr. Ben Wang has been named to serve as the Eugene C. Gwaltney Jr. Chair in Manufacturing Systems in the College of Engineering.  Dr. Wang joined the Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) faculty on January 1, 2012.  In addition his role on the ISyE faculty, Dr. Wang will serve half time as the new Executive Director of Georgia Tech’s Manufacturing Research Center.

“The strength of an institution lies in its ability to recruit great educators and leaders,” said Gary May, Dean of the College of Engineering at Georgia Tech. “Ben is an outstanding scholar and a trailblazer in his field, and manufacturing leadership is a critical issue for national competitiveness.  I am excited about the great opportunities that I see arising from his efforts. We are grateful to the Gwaltney family for their generous support which allowed us the opportunity to bring Ben to Georgia Tech where he can continue his important work.”

Wang comes to Georgia Tech from Florida State University where he served as director of the High-Performance Materials Institute. He also served as an assistant vice president for research in engineering and held the following three distinguished professorships: the Simon Ostrach Professor of Engineering, the FSU Distinguished Research Professor, and the U.S. Department of Energy Samuel P. Massie Chair of Excellence. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Industrial Engineers, Society of Manufacturing Engineers, and the Society for the Advancement of Material and Processing Engineering.

“Over the last 30 years, I have worked in various positions related to manufacturing — from operations and planning to strategy and policy,” Wang said. “The approach we will take to reaching the center’s goal of becoming the world’s manufacturing thought leader and trendsetter is to create an innovation ecosystem. We will add substantial commercial, economic and societal values to Tech professors’ inventions to license the technology to a company, create a joint venture or form a new spin-off company.”

Wang’s primary research interest is in applying emerging technologies to improve manufacturing competitiveness.  He specializes in process development for affordable composite materials. Wang also does research in nanotechnology and is widely acknowledged as a pioneer in the growing field of nanomaterials science. His main area of research involves a material known as “buckypaper,” which has shown promise in a variety of applications, including the development of aerospace structures, the production of effective lightweight body armor and armored vehicles, improvements in energy and power efficiency, enhancements in thermal management of engineering systems, and construction of the next-generation of computer displays.

Wang earned his bachelor’s in industrial engineering from Tunghai University in Taiwan, and his master’s in industrial engineering and Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University.