Ning Yan

Yan Ning (颜宁), also known as Nieng Yan, is a world-renowned structural biologist who announced her resignation from Princeton University in November 2022 to found the Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation (SMART), where she served as founding president. In March 2023 she was additionally appointed Director of the Shenzhen Bay Laboratory (SZBL), and she also holds a University Professor position at Tsinghua University's School of Life Sciences.

Yan completed her PhD in molecular biology at Princeton in 2004 under advisor Shi Yigong, studying apoptotic pathway regulation in Drosophila and C. elegans. She joined Tsinghua's School of Medicine as a professor in 2007, before being recruited back to Princeton in 2017 as its inaugural Shirley M. Tilghman Professor of Molecular Biology. She was elected a National Academy of Sciences Foreign Associate in 2019.

Yan's research focuses on the structural and mechanistic investigation of membrane transport proteins, including voltage-gated sodium channels and glucose transporters, work with major physiological and pharmaceutical significance. Her return to China, hailed in domestic media as the homecoming of a "goddess scientist," has made her one of the most influential figures in China's push to build world-class biomedical research infrastructure — several other scientists in this collection, including Dan Yang, Wei Lu, Chih-Ying Su, and Liang Shan, now work under her leadership at SMART.