Professor Wong is currently the Scripps Family Chair Professor of Chemistry at the Scripps Research Institute with a joint appointment as Distinguished Professor at Genomics Research Center, Academia Sinica.
He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from National Taiwan University, Ph.D. in Chemistry from MIT, and postdoctoral training at Harvard University. He has been a professor of chemistry at the Scripps Research Institute since 1989, and from 2006-16, he served as President of Academia Sinica. His main research interest is to develop new methods and tools for making and studying complex carbohydrates and glycoproteins and the associated glycosylation in disease progression. He has trained more than 300 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows and published over 750 papers and 120 patents. He was Head of the Frontier Research Program on Glycotechnology in Japan (1991-1999), a board member of the US National Research Council (2000-2003), a scientific advisor of Max-Planck Institute (2000-2008), member of RIKEN Advisory Council (2010-16), the Chief Science Advisor to the Taiwan Government (2006-2015), and President of Institute of Biotechnology and Medicine Industry (IBMI), Taiwan (2019-).
Professor Wong received numerous honors for recognition of his accomplishments, including, for example, the US Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award, the American Chemical Society AC Cope Medal, the Wolf Prize in Chemistry, the Robert A. Welch Award in Chemistry, and the Tetrahedron Prize for Creativity in Organic Synthesis. He is a member of Academia Sinica (1994), American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1996) and the US National Academy of Sciences (2002).