- Pritzker Fellows
- Current Fellows
- Yangyang Cheng
Yangyang Cheng
Research Scholar in Law and Fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center

Biography
Dr. Yangyang Cheng is a Research Scholar in Law and Fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center, where her work focuses on the development of science and technology in China and U.S.‒China relations. Her essays on these and related topics have appeared in outlets including The New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, MIT Technology Review, and WIRED, and have received several awards from the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA), Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA), and Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Her literary criticism has received the 2024 Kukula Award for Excellence in Nonfiction Book Reviewing from The Washington Monthly and a 2022 People's Choice Award from the Los Angeles Review of Books. She is an editor at the Made in China Journal and hosts its Gateway to Global China podcast. She is also a co-host, writer, and producer of the acclaimed narrative podcast series, Dissident at the Doorstep, from Crooked Media. She served on the inaugural jury for the Baifang Schell Book Prize from Asia Society and has been a judge for the James Beard Journalism Awards.
Born and raised in China, Cheng received her Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago and her bachelor’s from the University of Science and Technology of China’s School for the Gifted Young. Before joining Yale, she worked on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) for over a decade, most recently at Cornell University and as an LHC Physics Center Distinguished Researcher at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. While at the University of Chicago, Cheng served on the Student Advisory Board at the Institute of Politics (IOP) and was a co-founder of the IOP's student-run International Policy Program.
Seminars
“The Development of Science & Technology Within Shifting U.S.-China Relations: Whose Knowledge? Whose Future?”
U.S.-China relations constitute the most consequential bilateral relationship in the world today, and science and technology are at the heart of these troubled ties. Yet, the prevalent discourse in the public and policy realms routinely falls into false binaries like East versus West, autocracy versus democracy, and open science versus national security, reinscribing racialized tropes and bolstering techno-nationalism. This reductionist lens overlooks the social contexts of knowledge production and exchange, as well as the transnational nature of ethical concerns in scientific development. In a world connected by technology yet fractured by politics, what kind of science should one aspire to, and can its advancement transcend borders? This three-part seminar series will review the history of U.S.-China scientific exchange through key moments and players, examine current challenges, and explore paths forward.
Fellows seminars are off the record and open to current UChicago students only.
*This seminar will take place from 12:30-1:45pm
They are celebrated as the best and brightest who contribute to America’s scientific and economic superpower. They are accused of being covert agents who cheat and steal at Beijing’s behest. They are bridgebuilders who connect cultures and enrich understanding, or the bridges they build are conduits for intellectual property theft. In recent years, few groups have been at the center of as much controversy as Chinese scientists in the U.S. What has led to the current tensions, and how should we grapple with them? This seminar will trace the long history of U.S.-China scientific exchange with cycles of restrictions and opening, and discuss what they reveal about the politics in and between both countries, through the lives and careers of two distinguished University of Chicago alumni, Chen Ning Yang (PhD’1948) and Tsung-Dao Lee (PhD’1950).
*This seminar will take place from 12:30-1:45pm
Depending on where one stands, Huawei is either an exemplar of Chinese ingenuity and pride or part of Beijing’s sinister plot for world domination. Since its founding in 1987, the Chinese telecom giant has embodied the country’s messy transition out of socialist planning and its stunning ascension in global capitalism. What has led to Huawei’s success? Should the Chinese people be proud of a company that exploits workers and facilitates state surveillance? And how should governments and individuals outside of China assess the risks from Chinese-owned technologies? This seminar will use the example of one Chinese tech giant to examine the history of market reforms in China, the relationships between innovation and emulation, the implications of surveillance capitalism that are not limited to Chinese firms like Huawei and TikTok, and how the U.S. government and its people should grapple with these concerns.
*This seminar will take place from 3:30-4:45pm
On December 2, 1942, the world’s first nuclear reactor went critical on the University of Chicago campus, where the nuclear chain reaction became self-sustained. These days, the word “critical” frequents headlines and policy documents, describing everything from infrastructure to rare earth minerals. What makes a technology or substance critical? Should the government restrict the exchange of products deemed “critical,” and how? Are these controls contradictory to the ethos of the free market, and whose interests are advanced or curtailed in the process? The concluding seminar will critically examine the policies that govern the transnational movement of goods and ideas, as well as their popular perception, and encourage everyone to think critically about the language of and logic behind such regulations. Knowledge flows across borders have always been conditional; the question is under whose conditions and to what end.