Nieng Yan – Wikipedia

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Structural biologist researcher

Yan Ning (Chinese: 颜宁; born 21 November 1977) is a Chinese structural biologist and the founding dean of the Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation. She previously served as the Shirley M. Tilghman Professor of Molecular Biology at Princeton University where her laboratory studied the structural and chemical basis for membrane transport and lipid metabolism.

Early life and education[edit]

Yan was born in Zhangqiu, Jinan, Shandong province in 1977.[1] She received her B.S. degree from the Department of Biological Sciences & Biotechnology, Tsinghua University, in 2000. She then studied molecular biology at Princeton University, under the supervision of Shi Yigong, and received her Ph.D. degree in 2004. Her doctoral dissertation was titled “Biochemical and structural dissection of the regulation of apoptotic pathways in Drosophila and C. elegans.”[2] She was the regional winner of the Young Scientist Award in North America, which is co-sponsored by Science/AAAS and GE Healthcare, for her thesis on the structural and mechanistic study of programmed cell death. She continued her postdoctoral training at Princeton, focusing on the structural characterization of intramembrane proteases, until 2007.[3]

In 2007, she returned to Tsinghua University with an invitation by Zhao Nanming, director of the Department of Biology at the time. At the age of 30, she became the youngest professor and Ph.D. advisor in Tsinghua.[4] Her research focused on the structure and mechanism of membrane transport proteins,[5] exemplified by the glucose transporter GLUT1 and voltage-gated sodium and calcium channels.[6]

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In 2017, Yan decided to leave Tsinghua and join Princeton University. The move gained widespread attention in China and led to a national discussion both within the science community and the general public.[7] The cause was widely speculated to be the difficulty to do what she wanted to do under China’s academic system, as she had criticized the China National Natural Science Foundation’s reluctance to support high risk research in a series of blogs.[8] However, Yan dismissed this claim later, and stated “changing one’s environment can bring new pressure and inspiration for academic breakthroughs”.[9]

For her research achievements, Dr. Yan has won a number of prizes. She was an HHMI international early career scientist in 2012–2017, the recipient of the 2015 Protein Society Young Investigator Award, the 2015 Beverley & Raymond Sackler International Prize in Biophysics, the Alexander M. Cruickshank Award at the GRC on membrane transport proteins in 2016, the 2018 FAOBMB Award for Research Excellence, and the 2019 Weizmann Women & Science Award. Yan was elected a foreign associate of the US National Academy of Sciences in April 2019.[10][11] Yan was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021.[12]

On November 1, 2022, while speaking at the Shenzhen Global Innovation Forum of Talents, Yan announced that she will be resigning from her position at Princeton and will return to China to become a founding dean of the Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation. In December 2022, she resigned from Princeton and returned to China, where she accepted her new position.[13][14]

Honors and awards[edit]

2019[edit]

2018[edit]

2017[edit]

2016[edit]

2015[edit]

2014[edit]

2012[edit]

  • Howard Hughes Medical Institute International Early Career Scientist, HHMI[18]
  • Award for “Women in Science” of China[18]
  • CC Tan Award for Innovation in Life Sciences, China[18]

2011[edit]

  • National Outstanding Young Scientist Award, China[18]

2006[edit]

  • Young Scientist Award (North America Regional Winner), AAAS/Science and GE

References[edit]

External links[edit]


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