RISA People

Prof. William Shiyuan WANG is a Chair Professor of Language and Cognitive Sciences at the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU). After graduating from Columbia University and obtaining a PhD from the University of Michigan, he conducted early research on natural language processing at the esteemed IBM Research Center (Yorktown Heights) and the Research Laboratory of Electronics of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Apart from being a Professor of Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley from 1966 to 1996, Prof. Wang was also being appointed as an Honorary Professor from several universities such as Peking University.

Prof. Wang contributes significantly to various fields including Chinese linguistics, evolutionary linguistics, cognitive neuroscience of language and ageing. In 2021 and 2022, he was consecutively recognized into the list of the top 2% most-cited scientists. In 2024, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award at PolyU’s inaugural Yuen Ren Chao Prize in Language Sciences, which honored his contributions in the above research areas. Additionally, Prof. Wang also shares his expertise and advances the field of ageing through delivering public lectures. 

• Doctor of Philosophy, The University of Michigan

• Academician of the Academia Sinica
• Fellow of Guggenheim Foundation
• Fellow of Linguistic Society of America