Yen received his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1986.
His thesis advisor is Prof. Lotfi A. Zadeh, the father of fuzzy logic.
Between 1986 and 1989, he was the main architect at USC Information Sciences Institute (ISI) for an AI architecture that pioneers a knowledge-level integration of a descriptive logic knowledge representation scheme with production rules.
Before joining IST in 2001, he was a Professor of Computer Science and the Director of Center for Fuzzy Logic, Robotics, and Intelligent Systems at Texas A&M University.
Yen received the National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award in 1992.