Hai-Lung Dai


Hai-Lung Dai is a Taiwanese physical chemist and academic. He is the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Chemistry at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Early life and education

Dai was born in Taiwan to waishengren parents who fled mainland China during the Great Retreat. His mother was an elementary school teacher. He was raised in Zhonghe District in New Taipei and graduated from Taipei Municipal Chien Kuo High School.
After high school, Dai studied geology and chemistry at National Taiwan University and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in chemistry in 1974. Following military service, he went to the United States in 1976 for graduate studies. He obtained his doctorate in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley in 1981.

Academic career

After receiving his doctorate, Dai was a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology until 1984. That year he began teaching in the chemistry department of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where he remained for twenty-two years and became department chair and the Hirschmann-Makineni Professor. He founded the Penn Science Teacher Institute that eventually trained 300 in-service science teachers and was named as a model for training science teachers in a 2005 National Academy of Sciences white paper. In 2007 he became Dean of the College of Science and Technology of Temple University, also in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and was Provost of Temple University during 2012 - 2016. During his time as provost, Temple's USNWR ranking went from #135 to #115 and Temple became a Carnegie R1 Highest Research Activity University. In 2017, Dai was appointed vice president for International Affairs at Temple University.

Selected publications

  • Hai-Lung Dai, Robert W. Field . . Singapore; New Jersey; London; Hong Kong: World Scientific..
  • Hai-Lung Dai, Wilson Ho . . Singapore; New Jersey; London; Hong Kong: World Scientific..

Recognition

Dai has received several honors and awards, among them: