About Dr. Yang

Dr. Yang’s primary appointment at Mayo Clinic is in health sciences research. She also holds a joint clinical appointment in Medical Genetics and Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine.

She is an epidemiologist with special training and experience in genetic epidemiology. Her long standing research interest has been in the causes and outcomes of lung cancer.

Dr. Yang is leading three NIH R01 grants and co-leading three other NIH grants, investigating the causes, prevention and treatment of lung cancer. In 1997, she initiated and has since been leading the Epidemiology and Genetics of Lung Cancer research program, which has been designed to accomplish the following goals with a multidisciplinary approach:

1. Identify low penetrant yet high frequency genes that are involved in lung carcinogenesis, cancer progression and prognosis;
2. Investigate the roles of chronic and non cancerous lung diseases including inherited disorders in lung cancer risk;
3. Evaluate the health and quality of life among long term lung cancer survivors;
4. Search for high penetrant but rare lung cancer susceptibility gene(s) by family based methods; and
5. In the framework of the Rochester Epidemiology Project, continue to monitor the trends in lung cancer morbidity and mortality, to provide new leads as to causes, to estimate the attributable risks of high and/or low penetrant genes and their interactions with known carcinogens, and to evaluate the effectiveness of screening/early detection efforts.

Dr. Yang has been a member of the Mayo Clinic team since 1996 and is also a Professor of Epidemiology with Mayo Medical School.