Kan Wang

Kan Wang (born 1957) is a Chinese-American agronomist and professor at Iowa State University, known for advances in the genetic engineering of plants. She completed a BS in biochemistry at Fudan University in 1982 and a PhD in plant biology at Ghent University under Marc Van Montagu. She joined the Agronomy Department at Iowa State in December 1995 as director of the newly established Plant Transformation Facility and later held the Global Professorship in Biotechnology. In 2007 she and three collaborators became the first scientists to use nanotechnology to penetrate rigid plant cell walls and deliver DNA and chemicals with precise control, and she later delivered proteins and DNA into plant cells together using mesoporous silica nanoparticles. She received a National Science Foundation grant to develop tools for yams with better yields and stress resistance, a 2017 Fellow Award from the Society for In Vitro Biology, and election as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.