Michelle C. Y. Chang (born 1977) is the A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Chemistry at Princeton University. She is the recipient of several young scientist awards for her research in biosynthesis of biofuels and pharmaceuticals. Previously, she was a Professor of Chemistry and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, before moving her lab to Princeton in January 2024.
Education Chang received her B.S. in biochemistry and B.A. in French literature from the University of California, San Diego, in 1997.
She then moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for graduate school as a National Science Foundation Predoctoral Fellow (1997-2000) and M.I.T./Merck Foundation Predoctoral Fellow (2000-2002). She earned her Ph.D. in 2004 under the direction of JoAnne Stubbe and Daniel G. Nocera. During her graduate work, Chang studied proton-coupled electron transfer processes in ribonucleotide reductase enzymes, and demonstrated the first direct evidence of the radical transfer pathway of class I RNRs.
Following graduate school, she conducted research as a Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Medical Research Postdoctoral Fellow at University of California, Berkeley with Jay Keasling (2004-2007). At Berkeley, Chang studied enzyme-catalyzed reactions, demonstrating that by expressing plant P450 enzymes in bacteria like E. coli, the E. coli could be engineered to produce terpenoids, a class of natural products often found in drugs. Chang began her independent career at UC Berkeley in 2007. She joined the faculty at Princeton University in 2024.
Awards 2007: The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation New Faculty Award 2008: Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation Young Investigator Award 2008: TR35: Technology Review magazine Young Innovator Award 2009: National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) awardCAREER award 2010: Agilent Early Career Professor AwardAgilent Early Career Award 2011: International Young Talents in Chemistry AwardInternational Young Talents 2011: NIH Director's New Innovator Award 2012: Agnes Fay Morgan Research Award 2015: Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award 2016: Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry
Personal life Michelle was born in San Diego, California, to Chinese immigrant parents from Taiwan. She is married to her colleague in the College of Chemistry, Christopher Chang."National magazines tout two chemists and two astronomers as top innovators in their fields" , UC Newsroom, August 22, 2008 (retrieved January 26, 2010)
Publications Chang's scientific papers are listed on her group's website.
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