Dr. Humphrey Yao received his doctoral degree at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign in 1999 and then completed his postdoctoral training at Duke University Medical Center in 2002. He became Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Biosciences at University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign in 2003 and received tenure in 2009. Dr. Yao was recruited to NIEHS in 2010 and was promoted to Senior Investigator in 2018.
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The Reproductive Developmental Biology Group led by Dr. Yao uses organogenesis of the gonads and reproductive tracts as a model to understand the basic process of organ formation and the potential implication of the impacts of endocrine disruptor exposure to reproductive organ formation in fetuses and fertility in adulthood. Reproductive organs are one of the few organs that exhibit dramatic sex-specific pattern of dimorphic development. This unique pattern of development provides a model to understand not only the mechanism of sex determination, but also how progenitor cells make the decision to differentiate into tissue-specific cell types, the fundamental concept of embryology.
