Jason Yang

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I am a 5th-year chemical engineering PhD candidate at Caltech, coadvised by Professor Frances Arnold and Professor Yisong Yue, where I am supported by the NSF GRFP and the Google PhD Fellowship. Broadly, I am interested in developing machine learning-assisted workflows for protein engineering, particularly for discovering and optimizing enzymes. I am on the job market this year for academic and industry positions!

I interned during summer 2024 at Profluent, and I am also a co-organizer for the ML for protein engineering seminar series. I completed my BS in chemical engineering and applied math at Yale University. During my undergrad, I worked on membranes for water treatment with Professor Menachem Elimelech, and molecular simulation and machine learning of polymers with Professor Ying Li. In the past, I have also interned at Genentech and NREL.

Outside of research, I enjoy electronic music, exploring new places and foods, and learning about history and philosophy. I also enjoy teaching, mentoring, and collaboration. Please reach out!

selected publications

  1. illuminating.jpg
    Illuminating the universe of enzyme catalysis in the era of artificial intelligence
    Jason Yang, Francesca-Zhoufan Li, Yueming Long, and 1 more author
    Cell Systems, Aug 2025
  2. SGPO.png
    Steering Generative Models with Experimental Data for Protein Fitness Optimization
    Jason Yang, Wenda Chu, Daniel Khalil, and 4 more authors
    arXiv, May 2025
  3. alde.png
    Active Learning-Assisted Directed Evolution
    Jason Yang, Ravi G Lal, James C Bowden, and 6 more authors
    Nature Communications, Jan 2025
  4. creep.png
    CARE: a Benchmark Suite for the Classification and Retrieval of Enzymes
    Jason Yang, Ariane Mora, Shengchao Liu, and 4 more authors
    NeurIPS Datasets & Benchmarks, Dec 2024
  5. outlook.png
    Opportunities and Challenges for Machine Learning-Assisted Enzyme Engineering
    Jason Yang, Francesca-Zhoufan Li, and Frances H. Arnold
    ACS Central Science, Feb 2024