Prof. Wen-Xiong Wang, is the Chair Professor in the Division of Life Science, HKUST. He entered Xiamen University (at age 15) to study Marine Biology and received his BSc and MSc in Marine Biology in 1984 and 1987, respectively. He went to study in the Plymouth Marine Laboratory in England in early 1989 as a Research Student (on Scholarship). Two years later, he moved to the State University of New York at Stony Brook (USA) to study for his PhD (on Scholarship). In 1996, he obtained his PhD degree in Coastal Oceanography and after a short stay at Stony Brook as a postdoctoral researcher, he came to HKUST as an Assistant Professor in late 1997. In 2003, he was promoted to Associate Professor, Full Professor in 2007, and Chair Professor in 2014.
The final year undergraduate project of Prof. Wang in Xiamen in 1984 was to work on metal toxicity in bivalve larvae, which led to his first scientific publication [Effects of heavy metals on the embryonic development and larval growth of bivalve, Ostrea platicula. Journal of Xiamen University (Natural Sciences) 21: 96-101, 1985, in Chinese]. Research made a major turn in 1991, and he resumed his research interest in metals ecotoxicology, which continues until today.