Professor Yifang Wang obtained his BSc degree in Physics from Nanjing University in 1984 and his PhD degree from the University of Florence in 1992. He worked subsequently at MIT as a research staff and at Stanford University as a research associate. He become a Professor at the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China in 2001. He is the current director of IHEP. His research interests include neutrino physics, e+ e- collision physics, cosmic rays, astrophysics, detector design and construction, and methods for data analysis. He has been involved in a number of international experiments, including L3, AMS, Palo Verde, KamLAND, and BES. At IHEP, he led the effort for the design and successful construction of the BESIII detector. He led the Daya Bay neutrino oscillation experiment in China, which precisely measured the neutrino mixing angle theta13. This neutrino oscillation result was selected as one of the top 10 scientific breakthroughs by Science magazine in 2012. For his seminal discovery, Professor Wang was awarded the prestigious 2016 Breakthrough Prize.
