Yale Chemistry Professor Hailiang Wang Wins $2 Million Award to Transform Waste into Valuable Compounds

YCNCC Scientific Leadership Team Member and Yale Chemistry Professor Hailing Wang has been named as one of eight recipients of Caltech’s prestigious National Brown Investigator Award. The 2025 cohort, the second to be selected through Caltech’s Brown Institute for Basic Sciences, comprises distinguished mid-career faculty working on fundamental challenges in the physical sciences, particularly those with potential long-term practical applications in chemistry and physics. Each investigator will receive up to $2 million over five years.

The new funding will support Wang’s pioneering work to expand electrocatalysis to convert inorganic waste molecules, such as CO₂ and NO_x, into valuable and functional organic compounds containing multiple carbon–carbon and carbon–nitrogen bonds.

External link: Caltech Announces Eight Recipients of the 2025 National Brown Investigator Award