Grandmaster Yang Yang, PhD, is a lineage-trained Chen Tai Chi master, researcher, and founder of WaQi, a virtual platform delivering evidence-based Tai Chi and Qigong for chronic pain, performance, and resilience. His team's 350-participant randomized controlled trial of virtual Tai Chi and Qigong for chronic low back pain—for which he served as lead author—was published in the North American Spine Society Journal (2024) and demonstrated clinically meaningful improvements in pain, function, sleep, and quality of life. The work was featured at Harvard Medical School's 2026 conference, The Science of Tai Chi and Qigong as Whole Person Health.

He is also the founder and Scientific Director of the Center for Taiji & Qigong Studies (CTQS), the New York–based 501(c)(3) nonprofit research organization whose randomized controlled trials in sleep, anxiety, balance, immune function, cognition, and general well-being —conducted since 1998—provide WaQi's evidence base. His research collaborations include Weill Cornell Medicine, Columbia, Yale, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and Mayo Clinic.

A three-time intercollegiate martial arts champion in Shanghai, he began Tai Chi at age 12 to address a congenital heart condition. He earned his PhD in Kinesiology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is the author of Taijiquan: The Art of Nurturing, The Science of Power.