William Yang Wang
Also known as William Wang
William Yang Wang's research connects language, vision, and generative models. He completed a B.Eng. in computer science at Shenzhen University in 2009, an M.S. at Columbia University in 2011, and a Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon University in 2016. At UC Santa Barbara he directs the natural language processing group, and in 2017 he presented LIAR, a dataset for fake news detection. The British Computer Society gave him the Karen Spärck Jones Award in 2022, and in 2024 the IEEE Signal Processing Society recognized him with the Pierre-Simon Laplace Award. As of October 2026 he is the Mellichamp Endowed Chair in Mind and Machine Intelligence at UC Santa Barbara and founder and CEO of ChipAgents.
- Now at
- University of California, Santa Barbara and ChipAgents
- Works
- 875
- Citations
- 26,848
- h-index
- 64
Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 17 October 2026.
Timeline
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2009–2016
Degrees in computer science
He completes a B.Eng. in computer science at Shenzhen University in 2009 and an M.S. at Columbia University in 2011. From 2011 to 2012 he is an R. K. Mellon Presidential Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University, and in 2016 he receives a Ph.D. in computer science there.
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2016–2023
Professor at Santa Barbara
In 2016 he joins the University of California as an assistant professor and becomes director of the UCSB NLP Group. He is promoted to associate professor in 2021 and to full professor in 2023. His research connects language, vision, and generative models.
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2017
LIAR and DeepPath
In 2017 he presents LIAR, a dataset for fake news detection. With Wenhan Xiong and Thien Hoang, he publishes DeepPath in 2017, a reinforcement learning method for knowledge graph reasoning.
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2018–2021
DARPA, IEEE, and NSF awards
He receives a DARPA Young Faculty Award in 2018, an IEEE AI's 10 to Watch award in 2020, and an NSF CAREER Award in 2021.
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2019–2020
A chair and a research center
In 2019 he becomes director of the UCSB Center for Responsible Machine Learning. In 2020 he accepts appointment as the Duncan and Suzanne Mellichamp Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Designs.
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2022
A Karen Spärck Jones Award
In 2022 he receives the British Computer Society's Karen Spärck Jones Award as an associate professor at UC Santa Barbara.
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April 2024
A Laplace award in Seoul
In April 2024 he receives the IEEE Signal Processing Society Pierre-Simon Laplace Early Career Technical Achievement Award in Seoul for contributions to scalable algorithms in natural language processing.
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Since 2024
Founder and CEO of ChipAgents
He founds ChipAgents in 2024 and is its founder and CEO. In October 2026 the company introduces Build-A-Chip-Bench with NVIDIA for an end-to-end digital chip-design task. He is a professor and the Mellichamp Endowed Chair in Mind and Machine Intelligence at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Sources and credits
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- William Yang Wang - Wikipedia
- William Wang | UCSB Computer Science
- William Wang, UC Santa Barbara Computer Science
- “Liar, Liar Pants on Fire”: A New Benchmark Dataset for Fake News Detection - ACL Anthology
- DeepPath: A Reinforcement Learning Method for Knowledge Graph Reasoning - ACL Anthology
- William Wang | UCSB NSF Quantum Foundry | CNSI | UC Santa Barbara
- Karen Spärck Jones Award: Past winners | BCS
- Professor William Wang receives Pierre-Simon Laplace Early Career Technical Achievement Award | UCSB Computer Science
- Computer scientist William Wang receives prestigious early career technical achievement award | EurekAlert!
- ChipAgents Collaborates With NVIDIA to Launch Build-A-Chip-Bench for Autonomous Chip Design and Implementation | ChipAgents Newsroom
- Building the Future of AI-Driven Semiconductor Design: Celebrating 2 Years of ChipAgents | ChipAgents Blog