Qi Wang

Qi Wang is a Chinese-born American psychologist and Professor of Human Development at Cornell University. She is best known for her study of memory and culture. Wang is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and the Psychonomic Society. She is also a member of the American Psychological Association, the Society for Research in Child Development, the Cognitive Development Society, the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development, and the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition. She serves on many editorial boards and is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition. She directs the Culture & Cognition Lab at Cornell. Wang holds a lifetime endowed chair in human development at Cornell. Biography Qi Wang was born in Chongqing, China. Both of her parents were senior engineers before retirement. Her choice of becoming a psychologist was influenced by her aunt, a psychology professor at a Chinese university. Wang received her undergraduate degree in psychology from Peking University. She went on to earn her Ph.D. in psychology (with a minor in anthropology) in 2000 at Harvard University. Her academic advisors were Michelle Leichtman and Sheldon White. Wang’s dissertation, “Culture, self, and emotion: An integrative perspective on the development of autobiographical memory,” won the James McKeen Cattell Award for outstanding dissertation in psychology from the New York Academy of Sciences. Wang subsequently joined the Cornell Human Development faculty as an assistant professor and became a full professor in 2011. In July 2017, Wang was named Chair of the Department of Human Development. Cornell Human Development is a top developmental science department in the United States, known for its interdisciplinary and integrative research of development across the lifespan and being associated with many intellectual giants including Urie Bronfenbrenner. Wang is the first person-of-color to chair the Department since it was founded in 1925. During her term, Wang launched many initiatives to maintain and enhance the academic distinction and inclusion of the Department, and she created a blueprint for what has later become the Cornell Center for Integrative Developmental Science.