Dr. Ben Wang, FIIE, FSME, FWIF

The article FSU researcher’s “buckypaper” is stronger than steel at a fraction of the weight said

Working with a material 10 times lighter than steel — but 250 times stronger — would be a dream come true for any engineer. If this material also had amazing properties that made it highly conductive of heat and electricity, it would start to sound like something out of a science fiction novel. Yet one Florida State University research group, the Florida Advanced Center for Composite Technologies (FAC2T), is working to develop real-world applications for just such a material.
 
Ben Wang, a professor of industrial engineering at the Florida A&M University-FSU College of Engineering, serves as director of FAC2T which works to develop new, high-performance composite materials, as well as technologies for producing them.
 
Wang is widely acknowledged as a pioneer in the growing field of nano-materials science. His main area of research, involving an extraordinary material known as “buckypaper”, has shown promise in a variety of applications, including the development of aerospace structures, the production of more-effective body armor and armored vehicles, and the construction of next-generation computer displays.

Dr. Ben Wang, FIIE, FSME, FWIF is Simon Ostrach Professor of Industrial Engineering, and U.S. Department of Energy Massie Chair of Excellence in Engineering. He currently serves as Assistant Vice President for Research in Engineering at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering. He is Fellow of the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE), Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) and World Innovation Foundation (WIF).
 
In 1998, Ben founded the Florida Advanced Center for Composite Technologies (FACCT), a research institute sanctioned by the Florida Board of Education. As a direct result of his developing partnerships between universities and industries, in 2002, FACCT was selected by the National Science Foundation to join the NSF Industry/University Cooperative Research Center (I/UCRC) program. Through the I/UCRC program, FACCT partnered with Ohio State University and University of Wisconsin-Madison to form a synergy with industry and government in producing stronger, lighter, more versatile composite fibers at a minimum cost.
 
He is an editorial board member for the Journal of Multidiscipline Modeling in Materials and Structures, Composites B Journal, International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, Journal of Manufacturing Systems, and Journal of the Chinese Institute of Industrial Engineers. He was elected to the US Council of the Japan-US Conference on Composite Materials in 2005.
 
Ben is a coinventor on six U.S. patents. In addition to being the author or coauthor of more than 130 refereed journal papers and 60 conference articles, he is coauthor of Computer-Aided Manufacturing (Prentice-Hall) and Computer-Aided Process Planning (Elsevier Science Publishers). These books are currently being used worldwide. Computer-Aided Manufacturing won the IIE 1992 Joint Publishers Book-of-the-Year Award and the 1992 SME M. Eugene Merchant Manufacturing Textbook Award.
 
He coauthored the innovative Amazon download Robust design of assembly and machining tolerance allocations. In addition, he edited Integrated Product, Process and Enterprise Design (Manufacturing Systems Engineering Series), Concurrent Design of Products, Manufacturing Processes and Systems (Automation and Production Systems) and coedited Computer-Aided Maintenance: Methodology and Practices (Manufacturing Systems Engineering Series).
 
Ben received his B.S.I.E. degree from Tunghai University (Taiwan) in 1976 and M.S.I.E. in 1985 and Ph.D. in 1986 from the Pennsylvania State University. All degrees were in Industrial Engineering.