Dr. Kai Wang was born on September 11th, 1985 in Taiyuan City, Shanxi Province
(China). From 1998 to 2004, he studied the Taiyuan Foreign Language School
(TFLS). In 2004; he ranked 24th out of more than 300,000 students in National College Entrance Examination (NCEE) of Shanxi Province in China. He later attended
Nanjing University where he earned his Bachelor of Science Degree in Chemistry in
2008. In the same year, Dr. Wang joined the Department of Chemistry and Chemical
Biology at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Dr. Wang’s graduate research was conducted under the guidance of Professor Jeehiun Katherine
Lee and focused on the characterization of thermochemical properties, such as
gas phase acidities, proton affinities, tautomerism for two different types of chemical species (1,2,3-triazoles and damaged nucleobases), as well as probing the
mechanism of catalytic reactivity using mass spectrometry and computational
methods. While pursuing his doctorate degree at Rutgers, Dr. Wang was involved
in a number of projects including kinetic and thermodynamic studies on N-heterocyclic carbenes, catalyzed reactions (benzoin condensation, Stetter reaction) using mass spectrometry (MS) and tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) by using
mass spectrometer, isolated and explored the fragmentation patterns of reaction
intermediates using kinetic monitoring, collision-induced dissociation experiments,
analysis of resulting data in order to elucidate properties, structure or mechanism
of the reactions; and lastly; conducted the gas phase studies of 1,2,3-triazoles (gas
phase acidities, proton affinities, tautomerism and roles as ligands) using Cooks
kinetics method on Thermo LCQ Spectrometer and bracketing method on Fourier-transform Mass Spectrometry (FTMS). Aside from academic research, Dr. Wang
was also recognized for his gift of teaching. He was awarded the Rieman Award in
2013 for standing out as one of the best teaching assistants in the Chemistry and
Chemical Biology department