Jason Yi received his B.S. in biochemistry and molecular biology at Dickinson College and was an undergraduate research assistant in yeast genetics at the Fox Chase Cancer Center. He spent two years as a research associate in industry before completing his Ph.D. in pharmacology at Duke University. In the laboratory of Michael Ehlers at Duke, he studied how extrinsic factors direct neuronal migration and axon specification in the developing cortex.

Yi did his postdoctoral work in the laboratory of Mark Zylka at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). While at UNC, he discovered the master regulatory switch in the autism-linked ubiquitin ligase UBE3A. He showed how an autism-linked mutation affects this regulation, thereby providing a mechanistic model of how a single genetic mutation in UBE3A changes enzyme behavior and contributes to pathology. He is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.