Personal Background
I moved to the University of Memphis in Fall 2003 as an Associate Professor. Before that I was in North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University for seven years as Assistant Professor and later as Associate Professor. Before that, I did postdoc research at two places, University of Akron with Prof. Wayne Mattice (end of 1990 to end of 1993), and at University of Houston with Prof. Raj Rajagopalan (from beginning of 1994 to 1996 Fall). It was in Akron that I fell in love with Macromolecules and that I began my computational studies of macromolecules (Thanks, Prof. Mattice for giving me a chance!). My Ph.D. degree was from University of Notre Dame where I did experimental work in fluorescence spectroscopy studies of energy transfer in spread monolayers.
Though my Ph.D. training did not lead me into a career in fluorescence spectroscopy, the experimental training was not completely in vain. My Ph.D. advisor, Dr. Larry Patterson, would be proud of my very first experimental paper (and the only one as of now), published in Macrmolecules 1995, "Exchange of chains between micelles of labeled Polystyrene-block-Polyoxyethylene, as monitored by nonradiative singlet energy transfer". Y. Wang; C. M. Kausch; M. Chun; R. P. Quirk; W. L. Mattice. Macromolecules 28, 904-911 (1995). All my PH.D. training was put in good use in this paper! This paper was also highly cited because it was one of those early papers that raised awareness that chain exchange between polymeric micelle could be very slow. Now I enjoy collaborating with experimentalists and work together with them to understand/tackle the problems.
My favorite book is the Bible; My favorite verse is "Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life" (Proverbs 4:23).