Nai-Chang Yeh

She was born and raised in Chiayi, Taiwan. She graduated from National Taiwan University with a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in 1983, then pursued doctoral studies in the United States. She earned her Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1988.^[1]

In a personal statement on her life and career, Yeh has described her childhood intellectual and artistic curiosity leading her to excel academically. She credits her mother, a mathematics professor, and her Ph.D. supervisor Professor Mildred Dresselhaus as role models who helped to give her confidence in her ability to succeed in physics.^[2]

Her research emphasis is the fundamental physical properties of strongly correlated electronic systems. She is best known for her work on a variety of superconductors, magnetic materials, and superconductor/ferromagnet heterostructures. She is also interested in the physics and applications of low-dimensional electronic systems such as graphene and carbon nanotubes. She contributed to the development of a faster technique to produce high-quality graphene.^[3] Her experimental techniques include development of various cryogenic scanning probe microscopes for applications to nano-science and technology, as well as superconducting resonator technologies that have been applied to high-resolution studies of superfluid phase transitions and Bose–Einstein condensation in helium gas. She also works on exploring properties of topological insulators.^[4]

She is Professor of Physics and the Fletcher Jones Foundation Co-Director of the Kavli Nanoscience Institute at the California Institute of Technology.^[5] Yeh was the first female professor in that department when she joined in 1989.^[2] She is also part of the Caltech Institute for Quantum Information and Matter.^[6] She is currently a Chair Professor at National Taiwan Normal University.^[7]

She has been recognized by a number of professional associations:

• Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science;
• Fellow, American Physical Society;
• Fellow and Chartered Physicist, The Institute of Physics, UK;
• David and Lucile Packard Fellow for Science and Engineering;^[8]
• Sloan Research Fellow;
• Academician, Academia Sinica^[9]

She was lauded in Time magazine on November 18, 1991, as a scientific "rising star" in California.^[10] She is cited in the American Men and Women of Science.