Professor Yang Shi joined the Ludwig Oxford in 2020. Before that, he was Professor of Cell Biology and C. H. Waddington Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. Prof. Yang received his PhD from New York University and completed his postdoctoral training at Princeton University. He joined Harvard Medical School as an Assistant Professor in 1991 and was appointed a Professor of Pathology in 2004. ​

Prof. Yang’s research group is focused on identifying key epigenetic regulators in cancer, elucidating their mechanism of action and providing the conceptual basis for translating our basic findings to the clinic via the development of new therapeutic strategies. In 2004, his group reported the discovery of the first histone methyl eraser, LSD1, and demonstrated that histone methylation is dynamically regulated, in contrast to the long-held dogma that such modifications were irreversible. More recently, the Yang Lab focuses on two cancers – acute myeloid leukaemia and diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma – where chromatin/epigenetics have been shown to play a crucial role in the maintenance of a poorly differentiated state.