Dr. Yang obtained his B.S. in Chemistry from Peking University in 2011. He received his Ph.D. degree in Organic Chemistry in 2016 under the guidance of Prof. Steve Buchwald at MIT. In the Buchwald lab, he developed CuH-catalyzed methods for the asymmetric hydrofunctionalization of simple olefins. As an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow working with Prof. Frances Arnold at Caltech, Dr. Yang studied biocatalysis and protein engineering and developed biocatalytic asymmetric C–H amination. Dr. Yang started his independent career in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California Santa Barbara in 2020. By integrating synthetic chemistry, biocatalysis, protein engineering, bioinformatic and computational tools, the Yang group is reprograming nature’s biosynthetic machineries to address challenging problems in synthetic chemistry and asymmetric catalysis. Dr. Yang is a recipient of the Regent’s Junior Faculty Fellowship Award (2021), Faculty Career Development Award (2022), NSF CAREER Award (2022), NIH Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (2022), and the Thieme Chemistry Journals Award (2023).