Peidong Yang is a Professor of Chemistry and the S. K. and Angela Chan Distinguished Chair in Energy at the University of California, Berkeley. He also serves as a Senior Faculty Scientist in the Materials and Chemical Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. A member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Yang is renowned for his pioneering work on semiconductor nanowires and their applications in photonics and energy, particularly in artificial photosynthesis.
He is the Director of the California Research Alliance by BASF and a Co-Director of the Kavli Energy Nanoscience Institute at Berkeley. He also served as the founding Dean of the School of Physical Science and Technology at ShanghaiTech University. In addition to his academic roles, Dr. Yang is an accomplished entrepreneur, having co-founded Nanosys Inc., Alphabet Energy Inc., and Infinity Innovation Inc.
Dr. Yang earned his B.A. in Chemistry from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1993, his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Harvard University in 1997, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Santa Barbara before joining the UC Berkeley faculty. His numerous honors include the MacArthur Fellowship, E.O. Lawrence Award, ACS Nanoscience Award, MRS Medal, Baekeland Medal, Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, Arnold and Mabel Beckman Young Investigator Award, NSF Young Investigator Award, MRS Young Investigator Award, Julius Springer Prize for Applied Physics, ACS Pure Chemistry Award, and the Alan T. Waterman Award. In 2014, he was named a Thomson Reuters Citation Laureate in Physics.