Yang obtained his Ph.D. in 2016 under the supervision of Prof. Chunyan Zhou (Peking University Health Science Center). His thesis was focused on the mechanisms underlying Islet1 (ISL1) function in cardiac differentiation of embryonic stem cells. During his Ph.D. training, he joined Prof. Danny Reinberg lab (HHMI, New York University) as a visiting student funded by China Scholarship Council (CSC) and studied the epigenetic regulation of Polycomb Repressive Complex 1 (PRC1) during cardiac differentiation.

Before Yang joined the Babraham Institute, he trained in Prof. Jie Qiao lab (Peking University Third Hospital) where he developed his interest in understanding the epigenetic regulation of early embryo development. And he developed a single-cell multiomics sequencing technology (scNOMeRe-seq) that enables profiling of genome-wide chromatin accessibility, DNA methylation and RNA expression in the same individual cell.

Funded by the Wellcome Human Developmental Biology Initiative (HDBI), Yang joined the Babraham Institute in 2020 to study the epigenetic mechanisms that control human early embryo development and lineage specification.