Sue-Lein Wang is currently a distinguished chair Professor of National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) as well as a National Chair Professor. The major research of her Ph. D. study at Iowa State University was X-ray Crystallography and EXAFS spectroscopy. After postdoctoral research at Exxon Company she joined the Department of Chemistry, NTHU in 1986. She started a distinct field by researching into hydrothermal synthesis of main-group and transition metal oxysalt materials with nanoporous framework topology. Besides developing synthetic methods including deep eutectic solvents and hydrothermal vapor approaches, Prof. Wang has put emphasis on varied properties. Her persistence on using single crystals for detailed structure data has lent her to get deep insights into subtle and in-depth structure-property relationships. For example, she has unearthed a new category of lanthanide-free white, yellow and green phosphor materials in the system of nanoporous metal phosphates/phosphites.
In last 30 years, Prof. Wang has published over 290 SCI papers, with which a series named after her university, i.e. NTHU-n, is of particularly significant. Besides activator-free nanoporous MPOs, her important work also includes crystalline-walled mesoporous structures known as NTHU-13. Wang’s group is the first to use surfactant-type long-chain alkyl amines to produce entirely crystalline mesoporous frameworks. Not only the system of NTHU-13 has resolved the long-standing issue of whether inorganic pores can be expanded through rational synthesis from microporous to mesoporous regime while remaining crystalline, her group synthesized a material with 72-membered-ring channel, the largest pore ever in crystalline inorganic frameworks. These breaking findings was published in Science in 2013.
Prof. Wang received many honors and awards, including Excellence Research Award from National Science Council, Chung San Academic Research Award, Outstanding award from the Foundation for the Advancement of Outstanding Scholarship, Academic Award and National Chair Professorship from MOE) and Taiwan Outstanding Female Scientist Award.