Deren Yang is an academician at the Chinese Academy of Science, director of the State Key Laboratory of Silicon Materials, and director of the Institute for Semiconductor Materials at Zhejiang University. He received his Ph.D. degree in 1991 at Zhejiang University. In the 1990s he worked in Japan, Germany and Sweden for several years as a visiting researcher. He has been engaged in research on silicon materials for microelectronic devices, solar cells and nanodevices.