Early life and education
Frank Wang was born in 1980 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. He was the son of “a teacher turned small-business owner and an engineer father.”[2] As a child, Wang “spent most of his time reading about model airplanes, a pastime that offered more comfort than his middling grades,” and dreamed of owning his own “‘fairy,’ a device that could fly and follow him with a camera.”[2]
Speaking about when his interest in flying robots first emerged, Frank Wang referenced a comic book in the 1980s called “Dong Naojin Yeye” 动脑筋爷爷 (Grandpa Think-Hard) which featured a red helicopter. Wang explains in an interview, “I remember it so clearly, … I imagined that I’d make a plane like that, that could follow me when I’m hiking or on the train, and use a camera to send the images to me.”[10] At age 16, his parents bought him a toy plane, which he crashed immediately, an early setback that reinforced his fascination with flight.[2]
During high school, Wang met Swift Xie Jia, who would later play a significant role in the development of DJI. Xie joined the company in 2010 to run marketing and act as a confidant; he later sold his apartment to invest in DJI and became one of its largest individual shareholders.[2]
Wang initially enrolled at East China Normal University (ECNU) to study electrical engineering, but dropped out shortly after to reapply to different universities. After facing rejections from his top choices like Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University, he was later accepted into the Electronic and Computer Engineering program at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). Reflecting on his studies, Wang said, “At HKUST I took an electronics course that gave me the fundamental knowledge to build autonomously controlled flying machines.”[3]
In 2005, Wang and his team competed in the ABU Robocon competition, winning third prize among teams from across Asia.[3] For his 2005 graduation thesis, rather than selecting a faculty-provided topic, he proposed building an easy-to-use control system for model helicopters.[5]
Wang and two other classmates ultimately received HK$18,000 in funding.[10] On presentation day, however, the helicopter failed to stabilize and crashed, and Wang received a C for the project.[10] He later recalled that he “devoted everything to his final group project, skipping classes and staying up until 5 a.m.”[2]
Wang’s dedication to the project drew the attention of robotics professor Li Zexiang. Li noted Wang’s leadership and technical understanding and admitted him into HKUST’s graduate program, emphasizing that Wang’s poor academic performance was not reflective of his excellence in practical work.[11]
