Chang received her
B.S. in biochemistry and
B.A. in French literature from the
University of California, San Diego, in 1997. She then moved to the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology for graduate school as a
National Science Foundation Predoctoral Fellow (1997-2000) and M.I.T./
Merck Foundation Predoctoral Fellow (2000-2002). She earned her Ph.D. in 2004 under the direction of
JoAnne Stubbe and
Daniel G. Nocera. During her graduate work, Chang studied
proton-coupled electron transfer processes in
ribonucleotide reductase enzymes, and demonstrated the first direct evidence of the radical transfer pathway of class I RNRs. Following graduate school, she conducted research as a
Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Medical Research Postdoctoral Fellow at
University of California, Berkeley with
Jay Keasling (2004-2007). At Berkeley, Chang studied enzyme-catalyzed reactions, demonstrating that by expressing plant
P450 enzymes in bacteria like
E. coli, the
E. coli could be engineered to produce
terpenoids, a class of natural products often found in drugs. Chang began her independent career at UC Berkeley in 2007. She joined the faculty at Princeton University in 2024. ==Awards==