YAN Nieng received her Bachelor’s Degree from the Department of Biological Science and Technology at Tsinghua University in 2000 and Ph.D. from the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University in 2004, where she continued her postdoctoral research. She joined School of Medicine, Tsinghua University as a professor in 2007. Ten years later, in 2017, she was recruited back by Princeton University and became the inaugural Shirley M. Tilghman Professor of Molecular Biology. In 2022, Yan Nieng served as the Founding President of Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research & Translation (SMART). In 2023, she served as the Director of Shenzhen Bay Laboratory (SZBL).

Dr. Yan’s primary research interest has been in the structural and mechanistic investigation of membrane transport proteins that are of tremendous physiological, pathophysiological, and pharmaceutical significance. She reported the first structures of the human glucose transporters GLUT1 and GLUG3, the eukaryotic voltage-gated sodium and calcium channels, and a number of proteins involved in sterol metabolism. Her present research program focuses on structure-guided mechanistic understanding and drug discovery for pain relief. Her achievements have won her numerous accolades.