Frederic Wan received his B.S. (1959), MS (1963) and Ph.D (1964) degrees in mathematics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with three years between his first two degrees concurrently as a research staff member at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory. In 1995, he moved to UCI as Vice Chancellor for Research and Dean of Graduate Studies. He resumed full-time faculty status in 2000 and served as the founding Director of the Interdisciplinary Gateway Graduate Program in Mathematical and Computational Biology (MCB) from 2007 to 2013 and of the MCB for Undergraduate program from 2011 to 2016. Since 2002, his research on mathematical biology has been supported by the National Institute of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). In recognition of his contribution to applied mathematics, science and engineering, Professor Wan was elected a Fellow (and President) of the American Academy of Mechanics (AAM) in 1982 (1992-93), the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) in 1988, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 1994, and the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) in 2011. Frederic Wan was born in Shanghai, China to a Chinese American mother Olga Jung Wan and a Chinese Vietnamese father Wai-nam Wan in 1936.