Prof. Dr. Lai-Xi Wang received his Ph. D from Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Science in 1991. After postdoctoral studies (1993-1997, Johns Hopkins University; 1997-2000, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)), he was appointed assistant professor (tenure-track) in the Institute of Human Virology, University of Maryland in 2000.  In 2005, he was appointed associate professor (tenured). Currently, he is a full-professor in the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, University of Maryland School of Medicine.

Prof. Wang is a member of American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Chemical Society, ACS Carbohydrate Chemistry Division and Society for Glycobiology. He has won a lot of honors for his academic achievements. He served as grant reviewer for many foundations, such as National Science Foundation (NSF), USA and the National Science Foundation of China (NSFC). He is also the reviewer of many scientific journals, such as Journal of the American Chemical Society, Journal of Organic Chemistry, Nature- Chemical Biology, et al.

Prof. Wang’s research group is working in the areas of bioorganic chemistry, synthetic carbohydrate chemistry, glycobiology, and immunology. Three research projects are going on in his laboratory: 1) Development of new chemo enzymatic methods for synthesizing oligosaccharides and glycoproteins; 2) Structural and mechanistic study of endoglycosidases and glycosynthases; and 3) chemical glycobiology of HIV with an emphasis on exploring envelope glycoproteins for HIV vaccine design.