Yi Tang received his B.S in Chemical Engineering and Material Science from Pennsylvania State University in 1997, his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Caltech in 2002 under the mentoring of Prof. David Tirrell. As a NIH postdoctoral fellow, he worked with Prof. Chaitan Khosla at Stanford University. His research lab at UCLA is focused on natural product biosynthesis, biocatalysis and nanobiotechnology. He has received numerous awards for his research; recent ones include the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Allan P. Colburn Award (2009), the Young Investigator Award from the Society of Industrial Microbiology (2010), the American Chemical Society (ACS) Biochemical Technology Division (BIOT) Young Investigator Award (2011), the ACS Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award (2012), the EPA Presidential Green Chemistry Award and most recently the National Institute of Health Director’s Pioneer (DP1) Award. Currently, his research interests are in the biosynthesis of bacterial, fungal and plant natural products that have medicinal applications.