After graduating from Chiao Tung, Yang attended graduate school in Florida, doing research and writing his thesis under the direction of another Chiao Tung alumnus. Yang's thesis concerned Chinese-language input systems for computers, an area into which not much research had yet been done.
交大畢業後，他到美國佛羅里達大學繼續念研究所，跟著一位交大學長做研究、寫論文，他的論文是關於中文電腦輸入法的研究，在當時幾乎沒有參考資料。