YANG Jinhui was born in May 1971 in Renqiu City, Hebei Province and graduated from Changchun College of Geology with a B.S. in 1994 and an M.S. in 1997. He joined the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and completed his PhD in 2000. He was promoted to assistant professor in 2000 and associate professor in 2004, and became a full professor at the Institute in 2006. He visited the Department of Geosciences, National Taiwan University and GEMOC ARC centre, Macquarie University, Australia as a visiting researcher in 2001 and 2007, respectively.

His research interests are petrogenesis of igneous rocks, continental crustal growth and reworking, formation and evolution of lithospheric mantle, and the origin of granites with related mineralization. He has published more than 100 SCI papers, which has been cited more than 2000 times. He won the Hou Defeng Award in 2006, the Shen-Su Sun Award in 2008, the China Science and Technology Award for Youth in 2010, the Second Prize of National Natural Science Award in 2011, and the Outstanding Youth Award of CAS in 2012.
He now serves as an Assistant Director of the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, CAS, and is in charge of scientific research and Institute evaluation.