She is also a faculty member of the Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center and the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA. She was born in Jinan, a city close to the Yellow River and the hometown of Confucius. A fantastic biology teacher in her high school told her to read some college level biology textbooks to prepare for the Biology Olympiad. After reading a few books, Ye became intrigued by the beauty and complexity of biological systems and decided to major in biology. She attended Tsinghua University in Beijing, China and earned a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences in 2003.