Zongyin Yang completed his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering at Zhejiang University, where he created many inventions and had been awarded first prizes in national mechanical and robotic design competitions. He moved to Cambridge in 2014 after completing his MSc and fellowship in Optical Engineering at Zhejiang University. Zongyin was among the 80 honourees to win a full scholarship for doctoral students at the University of Cambridge. He received his PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Cambridge in 2019. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the Engineering Department, University of Cambridge from 2019 to 2020. He was selected as a Research Associate (Non-stipendiary Research Fellowship) at King's College, University of Cambridge in 2019. Zongyin is one of ten individuals to be awarded the Extraordinary Potential Prize of the Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-Financed Students Abroad in 2019. He was the first extraordinary prize winner in the UK's engineering field in the past several years.

Zongyin joined Zhejiang University as Hundred-Talent Program Professor in September 2020. On account of Zongyin's outstanding contributions in the field of optoelectronics, he won Qizhen Outstanding Young Scholar Award and was also selected as 'Innovators Under 35, China' by MIT Technology Review in 2021. He got the National Science Fund for Excellent Young Scholars

Zongyin is dedicated to the miniaturization of full-spectrum light emitting and detecting devices. He has made valuable advancements in the field, including being the first to propose synthesis methods for bandgap graded semiconductors and developing the world’s smallest spectrometer and widest wavelength-tunable nanolaser. Since 2010, he has systematically published 38 papers in the following top journals: Science, Nature Communication, Science Advances, Advanced Materials, and Nano Letters. 23 of these publications have had an impact factor greater than 10. As the first author, Zongyin has published five papers: one research and one review paper for Science, two papers for Nano Letters and one for Journal of the American Chemical Society. Additionally, Zongyin co-published a book with Springer Publishing Company. He has authorized eight patents in China, applied for one patent in the UK, one PCT patent, and a number of patents for technologies under development. Furthermore, Zongyin has been invited to serve as a regular reviewer for major publications in the field of materials and optoelectronics, including Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Communications, and Science Advances, and as a guest editor for Frontiers in Chemistry and Journal of Physics D.