When Dr. Wei Yang came to the United States from China in 1991 as an international student after working as a physician and clinical epidemiologist after graduating from medical school, he originally planned to stay a couple of years after earning a Ph.D and gain some experience working in the U.S.
“In 1996 right before I was graduating, I applied for a U.S. residency or green card as an outstanding scholar, which was approved in a few weeks,” Yang said. “I had debated for several years how long I would work in U.S. then return to China, but the longer [me and my wife] stayed, the harder the decision to be made about when to go back. Especially after had two children born in the U.S.”
However, when he quickly realized that the cost of his education was higher than he anticipated, Yang – who was paying for his education on his own – began looking for assistantship opportunities, which ultimately led him to the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR).
“The first time I heard about Reno and UNR was from a group of roommates who worked at Reno casinos for their summer jobs,” he said. “UNR was the first school to offer me an assistantship, so I transferred from Oregon State to UNR [where] I obtained both my master’s and Ph.D. degrees.”
As part of his original plan, Yang said he wanted to continue his clinical practice while simultaneously doing some type of work in public health after completing his doctoral studies. But when he got his first job in the U.S. as the Nevada State biostatistician and director of the State Center for Health Data and Research at Nevada State Department of Health and Human Services, that plan fell through.
Yang first joined the UNR faculty in 2007 and has served in several roles since then, most recently as a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics and lead of the Division of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Environmental Health in the School of Community Health Sciences.
“I think at that time environmental [health] was a big challenge with everyone, with a different community, internationally the environmental challenge to the human health is very important,” he said. “And with my background of the clinical science and nutrition and plus my epidemiology training, I think that that’s a good combination of environmental health and health using the epidemiological skills.”
