Dr. Paul Yang was born in Taiwan and raised in Bellevue, Washington. He received his undergraduate degrees in bioengineering and biochemistry at the University of Washington in Seattle, during which he was awarded multiple summer research grants from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, as well as the Mary Gates Endowment for Students. He received doctorates in medicine and neurophysiology at Dartmouth Medical School, which was funded by an individual M.D./Ph.D. pre-doctoral national research service award from the National Institutes of Health. He completed an internship in internal medicine at the University of Utah, and residency and fellowship in ophthalmology at the Moran Eye Center in Salt Lake City.

It was during his time at the Moran Eye Center where he first developed an interest in inflammatory eye diseases and degenerative retinal disorders under the guidance of Drs. Albert Vitale, Paul Bernstein, and Donnell Creel. Thereafter, he pursued a fellowship in ocular immunology and uveitis with Dr. Stephen Foster at the Massachusetts Eye Research and Surgery Institution in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as well as a fellowship in ophthalmic genetics and inherited retinal degenerations with Richard Weleber, M.D., and Mark Pennesi, M.D., Ph.D., at Casey Eye Institute in Portland, Oregon.

During his training at the Casey Eye Institute, he was funded by The Foundation Fighting Blindness under the Alan Laties Career Development Program, where he conducted laboratory studies to evaluate the effectiveness of immunomodulatory therapy in reducing secondary collateral damage in retinitis pigmentosa.

Dr. Yang is currently an assistant professor in ophthalmic genetics and ocular immunology at the Casey Eye Institute, and is a member of the Oregon Retinal Degeneration Center. He also has special interest in cataract surgery, especially pertaining to those patients with inherited retinal degeneration or uveitis. The focus of his research is to better understand the significance of immune-mediated damage secondary to the underlying genetic mutations found in inherited retinal degenerations. With the support of a career development award from the Foundation Fighting Blindness and a K08 from the National Eye Institute, he is currently conducting translational research in an effort to bring new medical treatments to the clinic for patients with retinitis pigmentosa.