Dr. Yang’s research interests are water resources management, water-energy-food nexus, agent-based modeling, coupled natural and human complex systems, climate change risk assessment, international rivers, transboundary water policy, hydro-ecology and geographic information science. Dr. Yang has extensive experiences in water management in the Great Himalayan, Sub-Saharan Africa region and the Western US. He leads more than 11 research projects (more than $2.5 million) funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, the Work Bank, the International Food Policy Research Institute, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research and the Research Triangle Institute. Most of these projects evaluated climate change risk and social development influence on the water-energy-food-environment nexus for large river basins such as the Colorado, Columbia, Brahmaputra, Indus, Ayeyarwady, Mekong, Amu Darya, Yellow and Niger. Along with the system modeling skill, Dr. Yang’s research can answer difficult questions of uncertain climate change impact and anthropogenic influence on water-energy-food-environment nexus quantitatively.
