Dingliang Yang (MAUD ’14, DDes ’19) has received the 2025–2027 McKnight Land-Grant Professorship. Yang is an architect, urban designer, and the founding partner of VARI Design, a pioneering design firm established in 2015, dedicated to cross-scale innovative design based on critical research as responses to different urban issues during cities’ developments and regenerations.
The McKnight Land-Grant Professorship Program recognizes and seeks to advance the careers of the most promising junior faculty members who have potential to make significant contributions to their scholarly fields and departments. Dingliang Yang is the first University of Minnesota architecture faculty member to receive this prestigious award since its establishment in 1987.
Learn more about Dingliang Yang and the McKnight Land-Grant Professorship .
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Photo courtesy of Dingliang Yang.