Lan Yang

Lan Yang is a Chinese-born physicist specializing in optics.

Lan Yang earned her bachelor's and first master's of science degrees at the University of Science and Technology of China in 1997 and 1999, respectively. She completed a second master's degree in materials science at the California Institute of Technology in 2000, and remained at Caltech to pursue a doctorate in applied physics, which she obtained in 2005. From January 2019 to December 2024, Lan Yang served as the editor-in-chief of the journal Photonics Research.

Lan Yang received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2010, followed by a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers the next year. In 2020, the American Physical Society awarded her an equivalent honor, "for seminal contributions to non-Hermitian photonics, optical sensing, and nanophotonics."