Wendy Yang


Wendy Yang is an assistant professor of Plant Biology and Geology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where she works on soil biogeochemistry and ecosystem ecology.

Early life and education

Yang is from Indialantic, Florida. She became interested in environmental science from an early age when she spent time at an environmental summer camp called Earth Corps at the Brevard Community College following 5th grade. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 2003, with a degree in Environmental Science and Public Policy. She then moved to the University of California Berkeley, where she earned her PhD in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management in 2010. For her dissertation, she worked with Whendee Silver on developing different methods to measure nitrogen production in tropical soils, for which she received a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant.

Career and research

Yang worked as a lab and field technician at the University of California Berkeley from 2003-2004. She is currently an assistant professor of Plant Biology and Geology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She is known for her work in soil biogeochemistry and ecosystem ecology, specifically examining the way nitrogen cycles through an ecosystem and the effects that anthropogenic use of nitrogen has on ecosystems. Her current research is focused on greenhouse gas emissions and soil and the role that microorganisms in the soil, like bacteria and fungi, have in producing these gases. She received a NSF grant to pursue this work in 2018, as part of a larger collaboration with scientists from Georgia Tech and the University of Tennessee Knoxville to understand the role microbes have in nitrous oxide emissions from soil.

Publications

Yang's most notable publications include her research on more precise methods for measuring nitrogen fluxes from terrestrial ecosystems, as it is often difficult to tell the amount of N2 gas released from soil due to the concentration of N2 gas already existing abundantly in the atmosphere. Another notable publication was Yang's research on leaf litter, how climate impacts the rate of leaf decomposition and the amount of nitrogen released by decomposition. Her most cited publications are as follows:
Yang is married to Glen Yang and has two daughters. She enjoys baking desserts. One of her proudest achievements is crafting a cherpumple, a triple-layer dessert in which each layer is a whole pie.