Clay C.C. Wang

Clay C.C. Wang serves as Professor and Chair of the Department of Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Southern California's Mann School of Pharmacy, with a joint appointment in the Department of Chemistry at the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

His educational background includes:

• AB in Chemistry from Harvard University (1996)
• PhD in Chemistry from California Institute of Technology (2001)
• Postdoctoral Fellowship in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Stanford University

Wang's research spans the chemistry-biology interface, focusing on natural product biosynthesis in microbial systems. His lab pioneers fungal host engineering using Aspergillus nidulans for sustainable production of high-value compounds, including plastic upcycling initiatives. Key expertise areas include Natural Products Drug Discovery, Fungal Secondary Metabolism Regulation, Space Biology, and Genomic Adaptation mechanisms.

His 2019 publications reveal a cohesive research trajectory examining how space environments (particularly ISS conditions) alter fungal genomics, proteomics, and metabolite production. These studies demonstrate significant stress-induced adaptations in secondary metabolism across Aspergillus and Fusarium species, with implications for pharmaceutical discovery and extraterrestrial microbial ecology.

Wang secured a landmark $600,000 NASA Space Biology Program grant (2014) enabling his team's ISS collaboration. His Wang Group holds patent 15338696 (2017) for engineered fungal strains with optimized natural product pathways, demonstrating translational impact from fundamental research.

The Wang Lab operates at the nexus of pharmaceutical sciences and space microbiology, employing integrated -omics approaches to investigate fungal resilience in extreme environments while advancing sustainable drug discovery pipelines.