After having received her PhD in Electrical Engineering from MIT this past spring, Rachel Yang has joined the Olin faculty as an assistant professor of electrical engineering.
The biggest thing that I look forward to at Olin is being part of the community
Everyone is very collegial and welcoming, and the students, faculty, and staff all take engineering education very seriously.
Rachel Yang
Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering
Yang’s research expertise lies in designing and modeling magnetic components for power electronics to improve the efficiency and performance of energy systems, such as data centers, electric vehicles, and renewable energy systems.
“Working on energy systems is about figuring out how to get electricity from one place to another, and a lot of the research tries to make things more energy efficient, lighter, and smaller,” says Yang. “One of the bottlenecks with this are the magnetic components because they fundamentally do not scale in size the same way that other components do. This is where I focus my work—it’s a really interesting problem because you have to play games with physics and rethink your assumptions about how things work.”
While at MIT, Yang also coached students in a variety of non-technical subjects, such as writing, technical communications, and presentation skills, both one-on-one and through workshops. In her free time, she is an avid writer, including video scripts for YouTube channels such as TED-Ed and SciShow.
Yang has received the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, the MIT School of Engineering Distinguished Energy Efficiency Fellowship, and the MIT E.E. Landsman Fellowship.
This fall, Yang will teach “Modeling + Simulation” (also known as “ModSim”), followed by “Introduction to Sensors, Instrumentation, and Measurement” in the spring.
“I’m excited to meet all these interesting people doing cool things at Olin and to get to work with some of them,” says Yang. “The College’s hands-on, studio-based learning approach is something I’m looking forward to engaging with.”