As Dr. Cathy Wong tells it, she “stumbled” into her career in academia after she walked into a lab and saw how colorful the lasers were.
“I thought this could be really fun,” says Wong, who uses lasers to study how material interacts with light and solar cells. Her research, which uses physical chemistry to research material synthesis, has longstanding implications, including responding to the world’s energy crisis.
As an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Oregon, Wong spends much of her time helping undergraduate juniors and seniors as well as graduate students develop passion for scientific research.
“I kind of always knew I wanted teaching to be part of my work,” says Wong, who earned her bachelor’s degree in biological chemistry from McMaster University in Toronto and her Ph.D. in 2011 from the University of Toronto. She later completed a postdoctoral degree from the University of California, Berkeley.
Having grown up in Toronto where ethnic differences are often celebrated, embracing diversity has been a hallmark of Wong’s career. Unlike her hometown, the city of Eugene, where the University of Oregon is situated, is less racially diverse, meaning that Wong — who hopes to come up for tenure in a little less than two years — has made it her priority to help students develop a sense of belonging and connection to the university.
In the classroom, Wong’s work largely focuses on helping design physical chemistry labs and teaching students how to build microscopes and write lab reports — skills she says will prove useful in their future careers.
Though she works with science majors, she teaches a section of physical chemistry that requires heavy math skills that often create anxiety among her students.
