Sam Wang (neuroscientist)

Wang was raised in Riverside, California, to a Taiwanese American family. His parents emigrated from Taiwan to the United States in the 1960s.{{cite web|url=http://news.xinhuanet.com/overseas/2004-10/28/content_2148497.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20041224175324/http://news.xinhuanet.com/overseas/2004-10/28/content_2148497.htm |url-status=dead |archive-date=December 24, 2004 |title=华裔王声宏获凯克基金会杰出青年医学研究奖|publisher=News.xinhuanet.com |date= |access-date=2012-03-13}} He attended the California Institute of Technology and graduated in 1986 with a B.S. in physics with honors at the age of 19, making him the youngest member of his graduating class.{{cite web|url=https://www.amazon.com/Sam-Wang/e/B001JP0Z5K/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1 |title=Sam Wang: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, Kindle |website=Amazon |date= |access-date=2012-03-13}}{{cite web |title=Spotlights and Top Stories Archive |url=http://calyptus.caltech.edu/news/news08.html |publisher=California Institute of Technology |date=2010-03-23 |access-date=2012-11-02}} He went on to earn a PhD in neuroscience at Stanford University.

After receiving his PhD, Wang worked at Duke University with George James Augustine as a postdoctoral fellow, for the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, and as a postdoctoral member of technical staff with David Tank and Winfried Denk at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey. There, he used pulsed lasers and two-photon microscopy to study brain signaling.

In 2006, Wang became an Associate Professor of Molecular Biology and Neuroscience at Princeton University; in 2015, he was promoted to Professor of Neuroscience.{{cite web|url=http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/professors/professor_detail.aspx?pid=402 |title=Sam Wang - Audio & Video Lectures | The Great Courses速 |publisher=Thegreatcourses.com |date= |access-date=2012-03-13}} His current research program addresses learning and plasticity in the brain, with a focus on the cerebellum, a major brain structure that processes sensory information and guides movement and cognitive/emotional processing. He has a major interest in autism, a disorder often correlated with disruption of the cerebellum's structure.{{cite web|url=http://synapse.princeton.edu |title=The Wang Lab at Princeton University速 |publisher=synapse.princeton.edu |date= |access-date=2012-11-25}}

Wang has published over one hundred articles on the brain in leading scientific journals and has received numerous awards. He gives public lectures on a regular basis and has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, and the Fox News Channel.{{cite web|url=http://online.itp.ucsb.edu/plecture/wang/ |title=Sam Wang, Princeton Univ, Welcome to Your Brain |publisher=Online.itp.ucsb.edu |date=2008-04-06 |access-date=2012-03-13}}

Wang has been widely honored for his scholarship and his advances in neuroscience. He has received the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, the Rita Allen Foundation Young Scholars Fellowship, a Distinguished Young Investigator Award from the W. M. Keck Foundation, and a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation. He was also selected by the American Association for the Advancement of Science as a Congressional Science and Engineering Fellow. In 2015, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie appointed him to the Governor's Council for Medical Research and the Treatment of Autism.

Wang is also a faculty associate with Princeton's Program in Law and Public Affairs.{{cite web|url=https://lapa.princeton.edu/people/samuel-s-h-wang |title=Samuel S.-H. Wang |publisher=Princeton University Program in Law and Public Affairs |date= |access-date=2017-10-12}} In 2017, he founded the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, a website that allows users to check for gerrymandering in the districts of their choice using three statistical tests: Student's t-test, the Median test, and the Monte Carlo method.{{cite web|url=http://gerrymander.princeton.edu |title=The Princeton Gerrymandering Project |publisher=gerrymander.princeton.edu |date= |access-date=2017-10-12}} He also co-authored an amicus brief for Gill v. Whitford with Heather K. Gerken, Jonathan N. Katz, Gary King, and Larry Sabato in favor of partisan symmetry tests for gerrymandering.{{cite web|url=https://www.brennancenter.org/legal-work/whitford-v-gill |title=Gill V. Whitford |publisher=Brennan Center for Justice |date= |access-date=2017-10-12}}

In 2004, Wang was among the first to aggregate US presidential polls using probabilistic methods.{{cite web|url=http://synapse.princeton.edu/~sam/pollcalc.html |title=Meta-Analysis of State Polls| access-date=2012-11-25}} The method's applications included correct election-eve predictions, high-resolution tracking of the race during the campaign, and identification of targets for resource allocation. Wang's calculation missed the final result by a wide margin, as he predicted that John Kerry would defeat George W. Bush by 311–227 in the electoral college, corresponding to a 98% probability of a Kerry victory. One of his alternate models did precisely predict the actual electoral outcome: Bush 286, Kerry 252.{{cite web|url=http://election.princeton.edu/2004/11/01/final-prediction/|title=Final Prediction: Kerry 311 EV, Bush 227 EV|website=election.Princeton.edu|access-date=January 6, 2018}}

In 2008, Wang and Andrew Ferguson founded the Princeton Election Consortium blog, which analyzes U.S. national election polling.{{cite web|url=http://election.princeton.edu/about/ |title=About the Princeton Election Consortium| access-date=November 4, 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121127001912/http://election.princeton.edu/about/ |archive-date=November 27, 2012}}{{cite news | url =https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/11/07/election-forecaster-sam-wang-on-the-future-of-polling-and-punditry/ | newspaper = Forbes | title = Election Forecaster Sam Wang On The Future Of Polling And Punditry | date = November 7, 2012 | access-date = November 9, 2012}} His statistical analysis in 2012 correctly predicted the presidential vote outcome in 49 of 50 states and the popular vote outcome of Barack Obama's 51.1% to Mitt Romney's 48.9%.{{cite web|url=http://election.princeton.edu/2012/11/06/presidential-prediction-2012-final/ |title=Presidential prediction 2012 – final| access-date=2012-11-07|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121107184018/https://election.princeton.edu/2012/11/06/presidential-prediction-2012-final/ |archive-date=November 7, 2012}} That year, the Princeton Election Consortium also correctly called 10 out of 10 close Senate races and came within a few seats of the final House outcome.

In 2016, PEC predicted a 93% chance of a Hillary Clinton victory in one model and a greater than 99% chance of a Clinton victory in his other model.{{cite web|url=http://election.princeton.edu/2016/11/08/final-mode-projections-clinton-323-ev-51-di-senate-seats-gop-house/|title=Final Projections: Clinton 323 EV, 51 Democratic Senate seats, GOP House|website=election.Princeton.edu|access-date=January 6, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161109171440/http://election.princeton.edu/2016/11/08/final-mode-projections-clinton-323-ev-51-di-senate-seats-gop-house/ |archive-date=November 9, 2016}}{{cite web|url=http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/11/6/1592120/-Five-Reasons-Nate-Silver-is-Wrong-Sam-Wang-is-Right-Hillary-Is-99-Likely-to-Win|title=Five Reasons Nate Silver is Wrong & Sam Wang is Right: Hillary Is 99%+ Likely to Win|website=DailyKos.com|access-date=January 6, 2018}}{{Cite web|url=http://election.princeton.edu/2016/11/08/final-mode-projections-clinton-323-ev-51-di-senate-seats-gop-house/|title=Final Projections: Clinton 323 EV, 51 Democratic Senate seats, GOP House|access-date=2017-01-05}}{{cite web|url=https://www.buzzfeed.com/jsvine/2016-election-forecast-grades|title=Grading The 2016 Election Forecasts|website=Buzzfeed.com|access-date=January 6, 2018}} Wang believed that polls were reliable and that errors were unlikely to be correlated. Fellow forecaster Nate Silver instead predicted that a larger error was very possible, citing the large number of undecided voters in 2016 compared to 2012, and believed that errors in state-level polling would likely be correlated.{{cite web|url=https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/final-election-update-theres-a-wide-range-of-outcomes-and-most-of-them-come-up-clinton/|title=Final Election Update: There's A Wide Range Of Outcomes, And Most Of Them Come Up Clinton|date=November 8, 2016|website=FiveThirtyEight|access-date=January 6, 2018}} Clinton lost the 2016 election to Donald Trump by more than 60 electoral votes, with Wang stating that "In addition to the enormous polling error, I did not correctly estimate the size of the correlated error – by a factor of five."{{cite web|url=http://election.princeton.edu/2016/11/09/aftermath/|title=Looking ahead|website=election.Princeton.edu|access-date=January 6, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161110160718/http://election.princeton.edu/2016/11/09/aftermath/ |archive-date=November 10, 2016}} In response to Trump's victory, Wang subsequently ate a cricket on CNN, fulfilling a promise that he would "eat a bug" if Trump won more than 240 electoral votes.Wang, Sam. [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/19/opinion/why-i-had-to-eat-a-bug-on-cnn.html "Why I Had to Eat a Bug on CNN"]. The New York Times, November 18, 2016.Morin, Rebecca. [http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/sam-wang-poll-expert-eats-bug-231278 "Poll expert eats bug after Trump win"]. Politico, November 12, 2016.

During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic Wang began tracking the spread of the disease and providing statistical data about the rate of its spread.Rayasam, Renuka, [https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-nightly-coronavirus-special-edition/2020/03/31/the-next-new-york-488763 The next New York], Politico nightly coronavirus special edition, March 31, 2020

Wang's first co-authored book, Welcome To Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys But Never Forget How To Drive,{{cite web | url = http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/welcome-to-your-brain-9781596915237 | title = Welcome to Your Brain | publisher = Bloomsbury USA | date = | access-date=2012-09-11}} was a best-seller. It was named 2009 Young Adult Science Book of the Year by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and has been translated into more than 20 languages.{{cite news| url=https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/science/09conv.html?pagewanted=all | work=The New York Times | first=Claudia | last=Dreifus | title=A Neuroscientist Studying the Structure of Dog Brains | date=2010-02-09}} His second co-authored book, Welcome To Your Child's Brain: How The Mind Develops From Conception To College,{{cite web|url=http://www.sandraaamodt.com/?page_id=25 |title=Welcome To Your Brain |publisher=Welcome To Your Child's Brain |date=2012-11-25 |access-date=2012-11-25}} has been translated into 15 languages. Both books were co-authored by Sandra Aamodt.

Wang and his wife, a physician, live in Princeton, New Jersey.{{cite news|url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F03E0D61E3EF930A3575AC0A9609C8B63 |title=WEDDINGS/CELEBRATIONS - Rebecca Moss, Samuel Wang - NYTimes.com |work=New York Times |date=2006-09-03 |access-date=March 13, 2012}}

{{Reflist}}

• [http://molbio.princeton.edu/labs/wang/sam-wang Wang's biography on Princeton's website]

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Category:1967 births

Category:American neuroscientists

Category:American people of Taiwanese descent

Category:American writers of Chinese descent

Category:California Institute of Technology alumni

Category:Living people

Category:Princeton University faculty

Category:Psephologists