Nadja Yang President  European Young Engineers

Speaker, Supporter

Nadja Yang

PhD Candidate & Rhodes Scholar, University of Oxford
President, European Young Engineers

Nadja is the President of the ‘European Young Engineers’ (est. 1994), a non-profit organisation that represents about 500,000 members, and supports young engineers across Europe to get engaged and broaden their horizons in the fields of energy, water, circular economy, STEM in politics, diversity & women in STEM, future of work, future skills and more. She is simultaneously pursuing a PhD in Systems Engineering at Oxford as one of two national German Rhodes Scholars, where she conducts research on the Urban (Circular) Bioeconomy, a concept to help cities become more sustainable and productive in terms of its biological resources. She strives to re-invent cities to become carbon-neutral and bio-diverse in times of rapid urbanisation. In 2019, she embarked on the study abroad programme ‘Semester at Sea’ and travelled on a ‘mobile university’ to eleven countries of four continents within four months. After she observed the worldwide plastic pollution first-hand, her wish to transform the global supply chain and resource consumption consolidated. Therefore, she strives to contribute to a sustainable and systemic economic transition, which she speaks about on stages like the world leading One Young World Summit. After working in the education sector during her gap year in Shanghai, she studied chemical engineering at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) where she founded the Environmental Student Department Garching that is part of TUM’s Student Government now. She researched on Resource Efficiency Policies at Tsinghua University Beijing and on Change Management and Circular Economy at the University of São Paulo. Additionally, she obtained work experience in industry, policy and consulting at Siemens, Systemiq, BASF, Linde and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. She received awards such as the McKinsey Achievement Award, Fulbright Scholarship, etc. In light of her German-Chinese background, she engages in diplomacy as the former Board Member of the Studierendenforum im Tönissteiner Kreis and the Founding Board Member of the first Student Think Tank for Europe-Asia Relations. To foster cultural exchange and live her passion, she recently founded the Oxford Chinese Dance Society after having co-founded TUM’s first dance crew. Moreover, she is a Founding Member of an international church in Munich where she co-led the musical part as guitarist and singer. She was born in Bremen and grew up in Offenbach and Frankfurt am Main.