Yan Yan

Investment Analyst

Investment Areas:

Clean Tech & Next-Gen Materials

Yan Yan is an Investment Analyst with TDK Ventures, supporting its investment practices in cleantech, advanced material, and bio-based materials.

Prior to joining TDK Ventures, she was an engagement manager at ADL Ventures. Her roles at ADL included sourcing, evaluating, and supporting new climate tech ventures, which allowed her to look into a wide range of climate tech topics, including grid hardening/wildfire prevention, gas system decarbonization, and advanced building materials. Prior to ADL Ventures, she was a TATA Technology Design Fellow at MIT, looking into biosynthetic natural gas-production optimization for emerging markets.

Yan Yan holds a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry and a Masters in Mechanical Engineering from MIT.

She is an avid home cook and hopes to one day write a cookbook about the food that she grew up with. She is passionate about climate tech investment and building a tighter climate community to connect climate tech innovators with peers, investors, corporates, and regulators.

Current & Upcoming Deep Explorations

Category: Energy & Cleantech

Explorers: Tina Tosukhowong, Yan Yan, Katherine He

Advanced Cooling

As technologies advance in the AI industry, data centers must adopt newer and more efficient ways of cooling. This exploration focuses on investigating advanced cooling technologies that could cut energy consumption to help make significant environmental impact.

Portfolio Companies Served

Board Observer

pH7 Technologies developed a proprietary metal-extraction process utilizing non-toxic organic and inorganic chemistry, as well as electrochemistry to drive extraction of metals and key minerals from ores, concentrates, and end-of-life materials.

Previous Deep Explorations

Categories: Energy & Cleantech, Mobility

Explorers: Tina Tosukhowong, Yan Yan

Carbon utilization via sustainable aviation fuel

The aviation sector accounts 2% of the global emissions. We are looking for technologies that can convert biogenic or captured CO2 into sustainable aviation fuel that can be used to decarbonize long-haul flights.

Category: Energy & Cleantech

Explorers: Tina Tosukhowong, Yan Yan, Hitomi Kondo

Precious Metal Recycling

The exploration provides learnings about critical metals whose supply chain might be constrained in the next decade and identify key startups and sustainable technologies.

Category: Energy & Cleantech

Explorers: Tina Tosukhowong, Yan Yan

Climate Risk Intelligence

This exploration provides learnings about sensors and satellites that are used to see risk on fire, water, GHG emissions, and plant growth for carbon credit calculation.