Ling Zang Portrait

Ling Zang, Professor in the John and Marcia Price College of Engineering’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering, has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Founded in London in 1841, the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) is the oldest scholarly society in its field and now boasts more than 54,000 members across the globe.

While any chemist can apply for membership in the Society, the RSC describes Fellows as its “most senior category of membership,” reserved for those who “hold positions of influence in our community and have invaluable experience, expertise and commitment to promoting the value of Chemical science.”

Zang’s expertise is in the field of nanomaterials, using the unique properties of matter that arise at the smallest scales to develop new sensing, measuring, and energy-harvesting devices.  Along with his research group, Zang has applied this work to supramolecular self-assembly and fabrication of nanowires that can signal the presence of trace amounts of airborne chemicals, including explosives, narcotics, and toxins.  This type of “electronic nose” technique has recently been extended to application in breath analysis, providing quick diagnosis of diseases, such as pneumoconiosis, especially in the early stage.

An NSF CAREER Award winner, Zang has previously been named a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and the K. C. Wong Foundation.