Hangzhou University
Yang was born on October 6, 1952 near Wenzhou, Zhejiang, China. He received his B.Sc from Hangzhou University (now part of Zhejiang University) in 1978, followed by a master's degree in biology in 1982 from the Nanjing Railroad Medical Institute (now Southeast University). Yang earned his Ph.D in 1988 from the Institute of Medical Genetics of University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He then completed his post-doctoral training in Europe (at CIML, INSERM/CNRS, Marseille, France, 1988–90) and the United States (at Harvard Medical School and UCLA, 1990–94).