Weitao Yang (Chinese: 杨伟涛; pinyin: Yáng Wěitāo; born March 31, 1961) is a Chinese-born American chemist who is the Philip Handler Professor of Chemistry at Duke University.
He entered Peking University in 1978 as part of the first generation of college students after the Cultural Revolution.
He also justified the theoretical ground of potential functional (as in Optimized-Effective-Potential methods) and fractional-number-of-electron approaches.
Yang developed the Divide and Conquer algorithm [4] for linear-scaling density functional theory.
In application, Yang also developed methods in QM/MM simulation for large chemistry and biology systems.