Jenny Y. Yang

Jenny Yue-fon Yang is an American chemist. She is a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Irvine, where she leads a research group focused on inorganic chemistry, catalysis, and solar fuels.

Early life and education Jenny Yue-fon Yang was born to a Taiwanese American family in the San Fernando Valley and raised in Chatsworth, Los Angeles. Her parents were Taiwanese immigrants. She graduated in 2001 with a Bachelor of Science in chemistry, and moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for graduate studies in the laboratory of Daniel G. Nocera. Yang's work in the Nocera lab focused on the synthesis of novel salen complexes that mimic the activity of the catalase enzyme, and exhibit epoxidation activity towards olefins.

Career Yang moved to Washington to conduct postdoctoral research at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), where she worked with Daniel L. DuBois on mechanistic studies of H2 oxidation with nickel bis(diphosphine) complexes. In 2009, she was hired as a senior staff scientist at PNNL. She then worked as a research scientist at the Molecular Catalysis group of the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis at the California Institute of Technology. In 2013, Yang joined the faculty at University of California, Irvine as an assistant professor of chemistry.

Yang publishes in the area inorganic and organometallic chemistry, electrocatalysis, as well as materials science.

Awards and honors Yang has received several awards. These include the DoE Early Career Research Award in 2014 In 2018, she was awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship, and in 2019 she was named a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar. In 2015, Yang was selected as a member of the Global Young Academy and in 2018, she was named a CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholars.