Dr. Nieng Yan received her B.S. degree from the Department of Biological Sciences & Biotechnology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 2000. She then pursued her PhD in the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University under the supervision of Prof. Yigong Shi between 2000 and 2004. She continued her postdoctoral training at Princeton University, focusing on the structural characterization of intramembrane proteases. In 2007, she joined the faculty of School of Medicine, Tsinghua University. In 2012 and 2013, she was promoted to tenured professor and Bayer Endowed Chair Professor, respectively. She returned to Princeton University as the founding Shirley M. Tilghman Professor of Molecular Biology in 2017. Five years later, she resigned from Princeton University and took on the post of the Founding President of Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research & Translation (SMART) as of December 1st, 2022. Meanwhile, she re-established her research program in School of Life Sciences in Tsinghua University as a University Professor. In March 2023, she was appointed as the Director of Shenzhen Bay Laboratory, which is a research institution that hosts more than 100 research teams focusing on basic and translational research in biomedicine.

Dr. Yan’s primary research interest has been in the structural and mechanistic investigation of membrane transport proteins that are of tremendous physiological, pathophysiological, and pharmaceutical significance. She reported the first structures of the human glucose transporters GLUT1 and GLUG3, the eukaryotic voltage-gated sodium and calcium channels, and a number of proteins involved in sterol metabolism. Her present research program focuses on structure-guided mechanistic understanding and drug discovery for pain relief. Her achievements have won her numerous accolades.

Dr. Yan 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, the 2019 Weizmann Women & Science Award, and the 2021 Anatrace Membrane Protein Award by the Biophysical Society. Dr. Yan was elected as an International Member of the US National Academy of Sciences in 2019 and an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021.