As an Advanced Accredited Practicing Dietitian and Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at Monash University, Dr Yao is an emerging global leader in dietary research in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and one of the few clinician-academic dietitians in Australia. Her research track record is excellent with >58 peer-reviewed publications; h-index 23 & >2500 citations) and she holds several prestigious grants from international and national bodies including the Crohn’s Colitis Australia Angela McAvoy Research Fellowship. In 2025, Dr Yao was awarded the highly prestigious 2026 NHMRC Emerging Leadership Grant to lead a dietary research program in UC (pouchitis). Her research expertise ranges from applying new biomarkers for assessing microbial responses to diet, developing novel pathogenically-oriented dietary strategies in IBS and IBD that stem from modulation of the gut microbiota and specialist knowledge regarding diet-microbial interactions to designing high-quality dietary feeding studies.