Ching Wan Tang received his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Cornell University in 1975. He then worked in Eastman Kodak and was named Distinguished Fellow of the Kodak Research Laboratories in 2003. He joined the University of Rochester as the Doris Johns Cherry Professor of Chemical Engineering in 2006 and has joint appointments in the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Prof. Tang was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1998, and the US National Academy of Engineering in 2006. He has received honorary degrees from Shanghai University and South China Technology University.

Prof. Tang has received numerous awards including the Eastman Kodak Innovation Award, the Jack Rajchman Prize of the Society of Information Display, the Carothers Award of the American Chemical Society, the Rochester Law Association Inventor of the Year Award, the Humboldt Research Award, the Wolf Prize in Chemistry, the Nick Holonyak, Jr. Award form OSA, the IEEE Jun-ichi Nishizawa Medal, the C&C Prize, and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.