Yimon Aye

Yimon Aye (Burmese: ရည်မွန်အေး; born 12 July 1980^[1] in Burma) is an American chemist and molecular biologist. Currently she is a professor of chemistry & chemical biology at University of Oxford.^[2]

Associate professor Yimon Aye
ရည်မွန်အေး
Yimon Aye in 2018
Born	12 July 1980 (1980-07-12) (age 45)
Citizenship	US-American
Known for	Electrophile signaling Nucleotide signaling pathways
Relatives	Soe Thein (father)
Academic background
Education	Chemistry
Alma mater	University of Oxford Harvard University Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Doctoral advisor	David A. Evans
Other advisors	JoAnne Stubbe
Academic work
Discipline	Biology
Sub-discipline	Molecular Biology
Institutions	University of Oxford
Main interests	Synthetic Methodology Chemical Biology Biochemistry Biophysics Molecular Biology Cell Biology
Website	https://www.chem.ox.ac.uk/people/yimon-aye

Career

Aye spent her early life in Burma. She completed her undergraduate studies in chemistry at the University of Oxford and obtained her master's degree in 2004.^[3] She joined Harvard University to study synthetic organic chemistry with David A. Evans, achieving her PhD in 2009.^[4] She then moved to Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation fellow to work with JoAnne Stubbe. There she performed research into the regulatory mechanisms of ribonucleotide reductase.^[5]

In 2012, she started as an assistant professor at Cornell University, where she began her work on redox-dependent cell signaling and genome maintenance pathways. During this time, she developed REX technologies, new methods to facilitate the study of unconventional electrophile-regulated stress signaling paradigms.^[6][7] REX technologies were one of the first approaches to forge direct links between upstream protein alteration by a reactive molecule and downstream responses.^[4] From August 2018 to August 2024 she was an associate professor of chemistry at EPFL.^[8]

Since September 2024 she's leading the Aye Lab at University of Oxford.^[2]

Awards

Aye was awarded the NSF CAREER award and Beckman Young Investigator award in 2014,^[9][10] the 2020 Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry,^[11] the 2022 Tetrahedron Young Investigator Award,^[12] and the Klaus Grohe Prize 2024.^[13]

Personal life

Yimon Aye's father Soe Thein is a former Commander-in-Chief of the Myanmar Navy.^[14] She has a brother and a sister.^[1]