UNC sociologist Y. Claire Yang has won the 2014 Population Association of America (PAA) Early Achievement Award.
PPA is a nonprofit, scientific, professional organization that promotes research on population issues.
The award recognizes the career of a promising scholar who is a member of PAA and who received a Ph.D. in the previous 10 years. It is given biennially to scholars who have made distinguished contributions to population research during the first 10 years of their career.
Yang, an associate professor in the department of sociology, focuses her research on population studies, medical sociology, social stratification and statistical methods. She is a fellow of the Carolina Population Center.
Yang’s main research interests stretch across demography, medical sociology, cancer and quantitative methodology. Her recent research focuses on trends and patterns of social inequalities in health and aging and the underlying bio-behavioral mechanisms. Her active research agenda has produced numerous publications in prestigious peer-reviewed journals, books, external funding from the National Institutes of Health ranging from two to five years, and invited talks in a number of countries.
Yang received her Ph.D. from Duke University in 2005. In that same year, she was hired as an assistant professor at the University of Chicago. In 2009, an opportunity for a new tenured position in sociology arose at Carolina as part of an initiative with the University Cancer Research Fund and the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. She left Chicago and joined UNC in 2010. She was hired with the intent of building interdisciplinary bridges between the social sciences and health affairs in the broad area of cancer research.
Her professional colleagues have recognized her accomplishments by electing her to a number of important posts, including the American Sociological Association’s Methodology Section Council, as well as the Population Association of America Board of Directors.
