Since 2017, Yang Ping has been a professor at the Institute of Crop Sciences at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. He leads the Barley Genetic Resources research group at the Center for Crop Germplasm Resources. Ping has published extensively on plant genetics and holds several patents in the field.

He earned his Doctor of Agriculture from Martin Luther University in Germany, with his doctoral research conducted in the Gene Bank Department at the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research in Gatersleben. Ping has also completed postdoctoral fellowships at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research and the Institute of Plant and Microbial Biology at the University of Zurich.