Vice President and Academician Andrew H.-J. Wang was elected the next president of the Federation of Asian and Oceanian Biochemists and Molecular Biologists (FAOBMB) in December 2009. He will take office in 2011 for a three-year term.

        Academician Wang will serve as President Elect throughout 2010, President from 2011 to 2013 and Past President in 2014 and 2015, serving a total of six years.

       The FAOBMB stimulates cooperation between biochemistry and molecular biology societies in the Asia-Pacific region in an effort to advance research, teaching and applications of biochemistry and molecular biology in the region. The federation currently has 18 members from countries which include Australia, China, India, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines and Taiwan.

         As federation president-elect, Academician Wang said that having previously been president of the Taiwan Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, he is fully aware of the mission and responsibility of the FAOBMB, especially to the scientists of the Asia-Pacific region. In his e-mail to federation members on being elected, Academician Wang said there is great opportunity for the federation to find solutions to major challenges such as global warming and sustainability, economic problems, and the imbalance between the “haves and have-nots” within societies and among different countries. “Our expertise in biochemistry and molecular biology will no doubt have an impact on biotech, agriculture, medicine, energy and more,” he said, adding that the FAOBMB will help train a new generation of young scientists who can create an even better world for the future.

         The FAOBMB is one of four regional groupings of the International Union for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (IUBMB). The other three are the Federation of European Biochemistry Societies, the Pan-American Association for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the Federation of African Societies for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. The IUBMB was founded in 1955 and has been collaborating with biochemists and molecular biologists in 77 countries to advance the field of bio-science.

        Vice President Wang is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute of Biological Chemistry at Academia Sinica. After receiving a Master’s degree in chemistry from National Taiwan Univ. in 1970, he gained a PhD in chemistry at the Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 1974. Academician Wang then held various research positions at Massachusetts Institute of Technology until 1988. From 1988 to 2000, he served as a faculty member of the Department of Cell and Structural Biology at the UIUC. In 2006 Academician Wang was appointed to his current position as a vice president of Academia Sinica.

         Academician Wang is widely-recognized for his use of interdisciplinary approaches to study complex biological systems such as structural enzymology. He became an Academician in 2000, and has been made a Fellow of several international institutions such as the Third World Academy of Sciences in 2005, the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1988, the American Institute of Chemists in 1987, and the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in 1987. Vice President Wang was also the recipient of the Taiwanese-American Foundation’s Science and Engineering Achievement Award in 2007.

         An active figure in advancing the development of sciences, Academician Wang now serves as a council member of Human Proteomics Organization (HUPO) and has held presidency of three societies – the Taiwan Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (2001 – 2004), the Biophysical Society of ROC (2001 – 2007) and the Taiwan Proteomics Society (2003 - 2006).