Xiangzhong "Jerry" Yang (; July 1959 – 5 February 2009) was a Chinese-American biotechnology scientist, and

stem cell In multicellular organisms, stem cells are undifferentiated or partially differentiated cells that can differentiate into various types of cells and proliferate indefinitely to produce more of the same stem cell. They are the earliest type o ...

research advocate. In 1999 he was credited with creating the first cloned farm animal in the United States – a cow called "Amy".Xiangzhong (Jerry) Yang
UConn faculty member profileCloning Pioneer Dead At 49
/ref> Born on July 31, 1959, and raised in Wei County,

Handan Handan is a prefecture-level city located in the southwest of Hebei province, China. The southernmost prefecture-level city of the province, it borders Xingtai on the north, and the provinces of Shanxi on the west, Henan on the south and Shando ...

, Hebei,

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

, Yang attended Beijing Agricultural University (currently China Agricultural University). Upon graduation, he took the entrance exam for graduate study and ranked number one among all applicants in his field. He was therefore awarded a prestigious scholarship from the Ministry of Agriculture to study in the US. He emigrated to the United States in 1983 where he received his PhD under Robert Foote in 1991. Yang became a research faculty member at Cornell University and received multiple grants from the Cornell Biotechnology Center and Easter AI (Genex; http://genex.crinet.com/). In 1996 he joined the faculty at the University of Connecticut as an associate professor, and in 2001, was appointed founding director of the University's Center for Regenerative Biology. In November 2017 Yang was honored with the naming of the street that leads to the University of Connecticut Dairy Bar from Route 195 as Jerry Yang Road. That same road is the location of the Agricultural Biotechnology Laboratory, where Yang performed countless hours of research that brought international fame to the Universit
University Honors Memory of Research Great Jerry Yang
In 1996 Yang was first diagnosed with salivary gland adenocarcinoma, a condition that would eventually claim his life. On February 5, 2009, he died at the

Brigham and Women's Hospital Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) is the second largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School and the largest hospital in the Longwood Medical and Academic Area, Longwood Medical Area in Boston, Massachusetts. Along with Massachusetts Gener ...

in Boston, Massachusetts, aged 49. An obituary was published by the scientific magazine '' Nature''.

References

1959 births 2009 deaths Deaths from cancer in Massachusetts Cornell University alumni Deaths from oral cancer Educators from Hebei University of Connecticut faculty Chinese emigrants to the United States American biologists Chinese biologists 20th-century biologists {{China-scientist-stub