Dr. Yang has ten years of experience in vaccine development and manufacturing and over two decades of multidisciplinary research studying tuberculosis at both molecular and population levels from the perspectives of epidemiology, molecular pathogenesis, and new vaccine and diagnostic development. As a principal investigator and a collaborator, she has studied the epidemiology of tuberculosis (TB) and TB/HIV coinfection both in the U.S. and globally, aiming at identifying the factors influencing the occurrence, distribution, transmission, and clinical presentation of TB and TB/HIV coinfection in different populations. The other major research focuses of her lab are the genetic diversity of Mycobacterium tuberculosis clinical strains and its clinical and epidemiological relevance, and implications for developing new TB vaccines and therapeutics. In addition, she has more than two decades of experience in teaching and mentoring public health graduate students at the School of Public Health of the University of Michigan. More recently she has extended her teaching and mentoring to the public health undergraduate students. As a tenured teaching faculty member, she has taught several interdisciplinary courses relevant to public health practice and research, such as "Vaccine in Public Health" (EPID513/PUBHLTH413), "Hospital Epidemiology I" (EPID680), and "Links between Infectious and Chronic Diseases" (PUBHLTH407).