Department of Chemistry

 RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Yinsheng Wang, a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Riverside, has received the Biemann Medal, awarded by the American Society for Mass Spectrometry (ASMS) to an individual early in his or her career in recognition of significant achievement in basic or applied mass spectrometry.

Wang received the medal and gave an award lecture earlier this month at the annual conference of the ASMS in Minneapolis, Minn.  The medal is accompanied by a cash prize of $5,000.

“I feel humbled to be the recipient of this year’s Biemann Medal,” Wang said.  “This is a great recognition of our work by the mass spectrometry community.  I appreciate very much the hard work of my graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, without which this would not have been possible.”

The first person at UC Riverside to win the medal, Wang focuses his research on discovering the biological consequences of DNA damage and on unraveling mechanisms of action for anti-tumor drugs and environmental toxicants. His laboratory’s use and development of mass spectrometry, synthetic organic chemistry, biochemistry and molecular biology enable us to understand, at the molecular level, how various DNA damage products are repaired, and how they perturb the efficiency and fidelity of the flow of genetic information during DNA replication and transcription.

Wang is the director of the Environmental Toxicology Graduate Program at UCR. He received his bachelor’s degree from Shandong University and master’s degree from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He joined the UCR faculty in 2001, after earning his doctoral degree from Washington University in St. Louis.

He is the recipient of a 2005 Research Award from the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, as well as the inaugural Chemical Research in Toxicology Young Investigator Award from the American Chemical Society in 2012. He was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2012.

The Biemann Medal was established by contributions from students, postdoctoral associates and friends to honor Klaus Biemann, a biochemist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Nominees for the award must be within the first 15 years of receiving the Ph.D. at the time of nomination.