Jiang Wu, PhD

2025 Regents Professor

Wu is a leading scholar of Chinese and East Asian Buddhism. His research focuses on how the religion spread and how it has changed and been refined over many centuries. He has written multiple books on Chinese history, including "Leaving for the Rising Sun: Chinese Zen Master Yinuan and the Authenticity Crisis in Early Modern East Asia," which won the inaugural Tianzhu Book Prize for Excellence in Chan Studies from the Tianzhu Buddhist Network.

Wu received a prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 2023 to support his project "Scripture and Modernity: The Obaku Buddhist Canon in East Asia and the West," which examines a Buddhist text created in China and later reproduced in Japan. He was also awarded a Certificate of Congressional Recognition by U.S. Rep. Judy Chu of California and received the City of Rosemead, California, Award of Recognition in 2018.

Wu is director of the university's Center for Buddhist Studies, and his leadership has significantly contributed to the center's global reputation in the field.