Rate My Professor Weiping Wang

Weiping Wang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Pharmacy and a member of the Dr. Li Dak-Sum Research Centre at The University of Hong Kong. He obtained his BSc and PhD in Chemical Engineering from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2011 under the supervision of Professor Ying Chau. After his PhD, he served as a Postdoctoral Associate at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under Professor Robert Langer and as a Research Fellow at Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School under Professor Daniel Kohane. In 2024, he was a visiting scholar at the laboratory of Nobel Laureate Professor Ben Feringa at the University of Groningen. He is also a Principal Investigator at the State Key Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology at HKU and leads the Laboratory of Molecular Engineering and Nanomedicine.

Wang's research specializes in nanomedicine, photopharmacology, ocular drug delivery, photoresponsive drug delivery, and engineering stimuli-responsive nanomaterials for drug delivery, with applications in targeted therapies, prodrugs for inflammatory diseases, and mRNA delivery. He has earned prestigious awards including two Gold Medals and one Silver Medal at the International Exhibition of Inventions Geneva in 2024, the HKU Overseas Fellowship Award in 2023, the NSFC Excellent Young Scientists Fund (Hong Kong and Macau) in 2022, the Thieme Chemistry Journals Award in 2021, the Journal of Materials Chemistry B Emerging Investigator Lectureship in 2020, the Faculty Outstanding Research Output Award from Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine at HKU in 2020, and the Young Innovator Award in Nanobiotechnology in 2018. Notable publications include "Near-infrared Light-Triggered Prodrug Photolysis by One-step Energy Transfer" (Nature Communications, 2023), "Red light-triggered anti-angiogenic and photodynamic combination therapy of age-related macular degeneration" (Advanced Science, 2023), "Green light-triggered intraocular drug release for intravenous chemotherapy of retinoblastoma" (Advanced Science, 2021), and "Upconversion-like photolysis of BODIPY-based prodrugs via a one-photon process" (Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2019). Wang has guest edited special issues for Medicinal Research Reviews, Bioengineering & Translational Medicine, and APL Bioengineering, and serves as Associate Editor for Medicinal Research Reviews. His innovations advance precision medicine for ocular diseases and cancer.