Yang Yang

Yang Yang is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at CAPLA and a member of Graduate Faculty in the Department of Systems and Industrial Engineering. She holds a Ph.D. in Systems Engineering from Cornell University, with concentrations in City and Regional Planning and Transportation Systems Engineering, and earned her professional degrees in architecture at Tongji University in Shanghai.

Dr. Yang's research brings AI, simulation, and data analytics into the design of buildings and cities, with a focus on how people move, feel, and perceive the built environment. Rather than treating people as an afterthought to physical performance, she embeds human dynamics directly into design workflows through agent-based simulation, machine learning, and data visualization. She leads URBANO, an open Rhino and Grasshopper plugin for urban modeling and mobility simulation with wide adoption and a filed U.S. patent.

Dr. Yang teaches across computational design, digital modeling, and performance driven design, from foundation visualization courses to graduate urban modeling. Her teaching emphasizes hands on computational skills alongside equity, inclusion, and the critical interpretation of what simulations can and cannot tell us.