Biography

Dan Yang earned a B.S. in Chemistry with highest honor at the Fudan University in China in 1985. Through the U.S.-China Chemistry Graduate Program, she obtained an M.A. from Columbia in 1988 under the direction of Professor Ronald Breslow. In 1991 she obtained her Ph.D in stereoselective synthesis of calicheamicin core trisaccharide under Professor Daniel Kahne at the Princeton University. Following completion of her doctorate, she spent two years at the Harvard University doing postdoctoral research in cellular receptor of immunosuppressant FK506 and on the design and synthesis of new immunosuppressants with Professor Stuart L. Schreiber. In 1993 she accepted a position as assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Hong Kong where she stayed until present as Chair Professor of Chemistry and Morningside Professor in Chemical Biology.

Dan Yang’s research interest ranges from synthetic organic chemistry to chemical biology, with particular focus on developing synthetic methods, total synthesis, and using both natural products and synthetic compounds to probe biological mechanisms. Amongst her achievements have been the developments of chiral ketone-catalyzed asymmetric epoxidation method, Lewis acid catalyzed asymmetric radical cyclization methods, foldamers based on aminoxy acids, and total synthesis of antitumor, anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive agent triptolide. Professor Yang was awarded the Mr. and Mrs. Sun Chan Memorial Award in Organic Chemistry (2000), the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation's Unrestricted Grants in Synthetic Organic Chemistry (2001), National Outstanding Young Scholar Award (2003) from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Ten Outstanding Young Persons Award (2004) from Junior Chamber International Hong Kong, Eli Lilly Asian Scientific Excellence Award (2006), Novartis Chemistry Lectureship Award (2008), TWAS Prize in Chemistry (2010), and the 7th Chinese Young Women Scientist Fellowship Award (2011).