Academic Credentials
  • Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, 2017
  • M.S., Mechanical Engineering, Harbin Engineering University, 2012
  • B.S., Mechanical Engineering, Harbin Engineering University, 2009
Licenses & Certifications
  • American Welding Society Certified Welding Inspector (CWI)
  • ASQ Certified Reliability Engineer (CRE)
Professional Honors
  • Vanderbilt University Graduate Student Scholarship
  • Outstanding Dissertation Award, 2009
  • Outstanding Graduate Award, 2009
  • National Scholarship, 2008

Dr. Yang specializes in mechanical engineering analysis, solid mechanics, fluidic and thermal engineering, and finite element analysis (FEA). She has particular expertise in system design, custom laboratory-based testing and failure analysis. She applies her expertise to assist clients in multiple industries, including consumer electronics, battery-powered micromobility, household appliances and medical devices on design/safety assessment, risk mitigation and failure prevention.

In addition to industrial problem solving, Dr. Yang has provided technical consulting services on intellectual property litigation and insurance investigations.

Dr. Yang has hands-on cleanroom experience with photolithography, soft lithography, thin film deposition, and etching, as well as experience with a variety of material characterization techniques including scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive spectroscopy (SEM/EDS), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), focused ion beam (FIB), dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA), atomic force microscopy (AFM), nano indentation, and nano scratch. Dr. Yang is familiar with all sorts of standardized reliability testing and custom mechanical testing, and particularly has extensive experience integrating testing into failure analysis to assist clients in fully understanding failure modes and improving product design.

Prior to joining Exponent, Dr. Yang was a research assistant in the Micro/Nanoscale Thermal-Fluids Laboratory at Vanderbilt University, where she designed a collection of bioMEMS and microfluidic platforms to investigate cell mechanotransduction and electrophysiology, as well as organism behaviors. She developed a cutting-edge optoelectronic graphene transistor-based bioMEMS for probing neuronal electrical activities with ultrahigh spatiotemporal resolution using scanning photocurrent microscopy. Dr. Yang also studied biomechanics of cells through a novel automatic setup and mathematic modeling. In her master's program, she designed and built a high-pressure flash evaporator that allows operators to experimentally study a complex phase-change phenomenon, flash evaporation; Dr. Yang was granted a patent for the flash evaporator in 2012. She also gained extensive experience in finite element analysis (FEA) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) with ANSYS, Fluent and COMSOL Multiphysics software during her graduate studies.