Dr. Yang earned her SB in Mechanical Engineering from MIT, and her MS and PhD from Stanford University's Mechanical Engineering Department, Design Division at the Center for Design Research under an NSF Graduate Fellowship. More recently, she was a postdoctoral instructor of design in the mechanical engineering department of the California Institute of Technology. She is the 2006 recipient an NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award. She has served as Director of Design at Reactivity, a Silicon Valley software company. She currently serves on the MIT Mechanical Engineering Visiting Committee.

Her primary research area is in the use of information technology for facilitating the design and manufacturing process. She has done research into collaborative design tools at Apple Computer's Advanced Technology Group and Lockheed Artificial Intelligence Center. In addition, she has explored the user interaction issues for software design, as well as ergonomics issues of force-feedback devices for Immersion Corporation. She has been a lecturer in design at Stanford University.

M. C. Yang and J. G. Cham (2007) "An Analysis of Sketching Skill and its Role in Early Stage Engineering Design." ASME Journal of Mechanical Design. 129(5): 476-482.

M. C. Yang. (2005) "A Study of Prototypes, Design Activity, and Design Outcome." Design Studies, 26(6):649-669.

M. C. Yang, W. H. Wood, and M. R. Cutkosky. (2005) "Design information retrieval: A thesauri-based approach for reuse of informal design information." Engineering with Computers 21(2):177-192.

J. G. Cham and M. C. Yang. (2005) "Does Sketching Skill Relate to Good Design?" Proceedings of IDETC/CIE 2005 ASME 2005 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, Sept 24-28, 2005, Long Beach, California, USA.

M. C. Yang. (2004) "An Examination of Prototyping, Time, and Design Outcome." Proceedings of 2004 ASME Design Engineering Technical Conferences, Sept 28 - Oct 2, 2004, Salt Lake City, Utah USA.

M. C. Yang. (2003) "Concept Generation and Sketching: Correlations with Design Outcome." Proceedings of 2003 ASME Design Engineering Technical Conferences, Sept 2-6, 2003, Chicago, IL, USA.

J. T. Dennerlein and M. C. Yang. (2001) "Haptic Force-Feedback Devices for the Office Computer: Performance and Musculoskeletal Loading Issues." Human Factors. 43(2):278-86.

D. Crow and M. C. Yang. (2001) "Industry Briefs: Reactivity." ACM Interactions. 8(2):71-74.

M. C. Yang and M. R. Cutkosky. (1999) "Machine Generation of Thesauri: Adapting to Evolving Vocabularies in Design Documentation." Proceedings of the International Conference in Engineering Design, Aug 24-26, 1999, Munich, Germany.

Teaching

University of Southern California

• ISE 544 (Spr 2006, Fa 2005, Fa 2003) - Management of Engineering Teams
• ISE 650 (Spr 2004) - Doctoral Seminar

California Institute of Technology

• ME71 (Spr 2003) - Introduction to Engineering Design
• ME72 (Fa 2002) - Caltech Engineering Design Contest

Stanford University

• ME101 (Spr 2000, Spr 2001) - Visual Thinking