Yang Shen

Shen Yang is an endocrinologist, board-certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine in internal medicine and in endocrinology, diabetes and metabolism, who left Huntington Health in Pasadena, California after more than 16 years of clinical practice in the United States to join Westlake University's school of medicine in Hangzhou, China as a teaching-track professor.

As reported by the South China Morning Post and VnExpress International, Shen was recognized by Los Angeles Magazine as a Top Doctor in endocrinology and became the first US-licensed physician on Westlake University's medical school faculty.

Shen's path to medicine began unconventionally: she graduated from Fudan University's sociology department in Shanghai in 1997, drawn to community work theory, then moved to the United States to earn master's degrees in sociology and biostatistics at the State University of New York at Albany. A turning point came when a friend suffered cardiac arrest during a basketball game and recovered after emergency treatment and intensive care, an experience she has said turned her toward medicine. She prepared for medical school in her spare time while working and, after more than three years, was admitted to the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Medicine, earning her MD in 2010.

She completed her internal medicine residency at the University of Chicago Medical Center and trained in endocrinology at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. In California she practiced at UCLA Santa Monica Medical Center and Huntington Health, treating Type 2 diabetes in adults and children, with clinical work also covering thyroid and parathyroid ultrasound imaging and cranial ultrasound evaluation.

Westlake University, a private research institution established in Hangzhou in 2018, launched its school of medicine in November 2023 to train physician-scientists who combine research training with clinical practice. Shen, whose appointment Westlake announced on July 21, is its second overseas teaching-track hire, following anatomist Zhang Xiaoming from Baylor College of Medicine in June 2024. Westlake has not said where Shen will see patients; its directly affiliated teaching hospital, Hangzhou First People's Hospital, came under Westlake's management in November 2023 under an agreement with the Hangzhou Municipal Health Commission.