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.Yang studied chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, where she worked in the laboratory of Jeffrey R. Long. Yang synthesized novel Prussian blue analog materials and analyzed their magnetic properties. She graduated in 2001 with a bachelor's in 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. She graduated with her Ph.D. in 2007.
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 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.