endle

“On March 19, at approximately 11:00 p.m., officers from the University of Michigan Police Department responded to a report of a subject who fell inside the George G. Brown Building,” the statement read. “A faculty research assistant was found after falling from an upper level and was later pronounced deceased.”

Lin Jian, spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that the U-M researcher died by suicide after U.S. law enforcement interrogated him, urging the U.S. to conduct a full investigation. 

Wang worked in the lab of Zetian Mi, an electrical and computer engineering professor. Engineering Dean Karen Thole wrote in an email Friday that Wang played a major role in research breakthroughs at the University of Michigan, and the community is mourning his death.  “Dr. Wang was a promising and brilliant young mind, whose research into wide bandgap III-nitride semiconductor materials and devices published in Nature stands as a landmark, uncovering for the first time the switching and charge compensation mechanisms of emerging ferroelectric nitrides,” Thole wrote. “His loss is felt deeply not only by those who knew him here at the University, but also everyone who understands his potential to have contributed to breakthroughs in science that would have positively impacted people around the world.”