Dr. Ben Wang, an industrial engineer who earned his Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University, will assume the role of executive director of the Manufacturing Research Center at Georgia Tech on January 1, 2012.  Wang will also hold an appointment as professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial Engineering.  

“Dr. Wang is an internationally renowned scholar and leader who will oversee Georgia Tech’s interdisciplinary manufacturing programs and their impact on economic development,” said Steve Cross, executive vice president for research. “Through his leadership, we will see a renaissance in manufacturing in this state.”

“Over the last 30 years, I have worked in various positions related to manufacturing — from operations and planning to strategy and policy,” Wang said. “The approach we will take to reaching the center’s goal of becoming the world’s manufacturing thought leader and trendsetter is to create an innovation ecosystem. We will add substantial commercial, economic and societal values to Tech professors’ inventions to license the technology to a company, create a joint venture or form a new spin-off company.”

Wang is currently the director of the High-Performance Materials Institute at Florida State University.  He serves as an assistant vice president in engineering and holds multiple distinguished professorships.  Wang earned his bachelor's degree from Tunghai University before continuing to graduate school at Pennsylvania State University.