Yang Yang (scientist)

Yang was born in 1958 in Taiwan, growing up in the countryside before moving to Taipei with his family at the age of 10. He earned a B.S. in physics from National Cheng Kung University in 1982. After graduation, he served two years of military service, a mandatory policy for qualified males in Taiwan. in the Department of Physics, earning his M.S. in Physics and Applied Physics in 1988. Yang later transitioned to research on the physical properties of conductive polymers in the Department of Chemistry, earning his Ph.D. in Physics and Applied Physics in 1992 under the supervision of Prof. Jayant Kumar and Prof. Sukant K. Tripathy. Yang's Ph.D. thesis was titled Photoinduced charge carrier generation and transport in polydiacetylene single crystals. == Career ==

After graduating with his Ph.D. in 1992, Yang worked as a researcher at UNIAX Corporation in Santa Barbara, California (now DuPont Display Materials). He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1998, and full Professor in 2002. From 2019 to 2020, Yang served as the founding Dean of the School of Engineering at Westlake University in Hangzhou, China. == Awards and memberships ==

Yang is a highly cited researcher, and has been ranked a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate/Thomson Reuters since at least 2015. His work has been featured on mainstream news outlets such as NPR, Bloomberg, Time Magazine, USA Today, the LA Times, and the New York Times. Other awards that Yang has received include: • Sustainable Energy Award of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2019) • Named one of "World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds" by Thomson Reuters (2016) • Distinguished Achievement Award, Chinese-American Engineers and Scientists Association of Southern California (2016) • • Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2019) • Fellow of the American Physical Society (2015) • Fellow of the Materials Research Society (2015) • Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2014) • Member of the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (2014) == References ==