Ching W. Tang obtained his B.S. (chemistry) from the University of British Columbia in 1970 and PhD from Cornell University in 1975.  He joined the University of Rochester in 2006 as the Doris John Cherry Professor of Chemical Engineering after spending 31 years as a research scientist with the Eastman Kodak Company. In 2013 he was appointed the Bank of East Asia Professor of the Jockey Club Institute for Advanced Study, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Tang’s research interest centers on developing high-efficiency optoelectronic devices based on organic semiconductors.  He is best known for the invention (during his tenure at Kodak Research Laboratories) of bi-layer organic light emitting diodes (OLED) and organic photovoltaic cells based on a donor-acceptor heterojunction structure, which laid the foundation for today’s organic electronic devices. Tang was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society, a fellow of the Society for Information Display, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, a member of the Academy of Sciences of Hong Kong, and a fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of Engineering Sciences. His notable awards include the 2011 Wolf Prize in Chemistry, the 2014 Nick Holonyak Jr. Award from the Optical Society, and most recently the 2017 Jun-ichi Nishizawa Medal from IEEE.