Yao Zhang was born in Inner Mongolia in 1996. She received her B.S. from Northwest A&F University, where she worked with Professor Junru Wang on natural product synthesis. In 2018, Yao moved to Sustech and joined the Xumu Zhang's group, studying asymmetric reductive amination and asymmetric hydrogenation. After obtaining her Master degree in 2020, Yao went to the He group to pursue her Ph.D., mainly focused on the MOF-based transition-metal catalysis. Outside of lab, Yao likes playing drums and swimming.