Prof. Lili Yang, PhD

Dr. Lili Yang is currently an Associate Professor at UCLA. She received her B.S. degree in Biology from the University of Science & Technology of China (USTC) in 1997, her M.S. degree in Biomedical Sciences from the University of California, Riverside (UCR) in 1999, and her Ph.D. degree in Biology from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 2004. She obtained her Ph.D. training at the Laboratory of David Baltimore.

Post graduation, she stayed at Caltech and led a multi-institutional Engineering Immunity Program from 2004 to 2012, developing gene- and cell-based immunotherapies for cancer and HIV/AIDS. She joined the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) as an Assistant Professor in 2013. Her laboratory at UCLA studies tumor immunology and cancer immunotherapy, with a special focus on stem cell-based and gene-engineered immunotherapy for cancer. Her work has resulted in over 35 peer-reviewed publications (in prestigious journals including Nature, Nature Biotechnology, Cell Stem Cell, PNAS, J Exp Med, J Clin Invest, Blood, etc.), 15 patents, 2 clinical trials, and 2 biotech startups.

In recognition of her scientific achievements, Dr. Lili Yang has received multiple prestigious awards, including the TR35 (Innovators Under 35) Award from the MIT Technology Review Magazine , the Forbeck Scholar Award, the Director’s New Innovator Award from the National Institute of Health (NIH), the Translational Research Project Award from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), the Young Investigator Award from the American Association of Immunologists (AAI), and the Outstanding New Investigator Award from the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy (ASGCT).