Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, professor recognized for research into the biological mechanisms underlying chronic and infectious diseases

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) today announced that Jason H. Yang, Ph.D., has received the 2021 Agilent Early Career Professor Award. Dr. Yang is an assistant professor of Microbiology, Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics in the Center for Emerging and Re-Emerging Pathogens at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. This year’s award focus was contributions to the development of breakthrough solutions to understand or manage immunological responses to infection, autoimmunity, or cancer.

Dr. Yang’s multidisciplinary research program integrates high-throughput, quantitative experimentation with network modeling and machine learning to study mechanisms underlying the progression and cure of human diseases. The Agilent Early Career Professor Award will support research that reverse engineers the cell circuitry of human macrophages to enable the development of synthetically engineered macrophages as new cell-based therapies for treating infections, autoimmunity, and cancer.

“It is an immense honor to be named for this year’s prestigious Agilent Early Career Professor Award. This competitive award will enable us to expand our research capabilities and allow us to make new quantitative, real-time measurements into understanding how immune cells make cellular decisions,” said Yang. “We are excited about the new discoveries this award will help unlock and about the new relationship we will build with Agilent as our work at Rutgers moves forward.”

“Dr. Yang’s innovative research leverages an integrated set of expertise in network modeling and machine learning tools, with high-throughput, quantitative experimentation to accelerate the discovery of biological mechanisms underlying the function of the human immune system,” said Jack Wenstrand, Ph.D., director of University Relations and External Research at Agilent. “We are delighted to contribute to and accelerate Dr. Yang’s research, and we are confident that his methods, his discoveries, and the students he will advise will be influential in the research community and will translate to improvements in human health.”

Dr. Yang was selected as the 2021 recipient because of his focus on developing innovative therapies for chronic and infectious diseases using systems biology and synthetic biology approaches. Dr. Yang joined Rutgers New Jersey Medical School in 2019 as an assistant professor. He has developed interpretable machine learning approaches for studying cellular phenotypes associated with human disease by applying biological network models as tools to enhance the interpretability of machine learning models. Dr. Yang’s lab is now extending these approaches to tackle the global health challenges posed by antimicrobial resistance, tuberculosis, and cardiovascular disease.

The Agilent Early Career Professor Award is an annual program that recognizes and supports promising research from professors who, early in their careers, show outstanding potential for future research in areas of importance to the communities Agilent serves. This award underscores Agilent's commitment to furthering research through the company's products and services, financial support, and collaborative engagement by Agilent scientists and engineers. Further information about the Agilent Early Career Professor Award is available at Agilent.com.

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