© JILL HUNTERAs an undergraduate, Yun “Nancy” Huang thought she wanted to be a doctor. But after earning a bachelor’s degree from Zhejiang University School of Medicine in Hangzhou, China, she says, “I realized that in order to cure. . .disease, I needed to learn the basic biology of disease.”
In 2005, Huang moved to the U.S. to begin a doctorate in biochemistry under Jenny Yang at Georgia State University. “I still remember vividly the day she joined my lab,” says Yang. She asked Huang to prepare a presentation reviewing a topic about which Huang knew nothing, and the newly arrived doctoral student shot back that she’d be ready to do it the very next week. “I was quite shocked at her quick response and her confidence.”
Yang says she felt free to push Huang more than other students. “She was fearless with any challenge placed in front of her,” she says. And the pressure paid off: Huang identified several receptor binding sites for extracellular calcium1 and published five first-author studies during her four years ...
