Dr Yan received his BSc (in biological sciences) at Tsinghua University and PhD (in Medical Science) at Karolinska Institutet, investigating molecular mechanism of transcriptional regulation in colorectal cancer cells (supervisor: Prof. Jussi Taipale). In 2014, Dr Yan moved to US to study 3D genome organization and gene regulation as a postdoc fellow at UC San Diego (with Prof. Bing Ren). After more than a decade of biological research training in Asia, Europe and America, he joined the Department of Biomedical Sciences, in the fall of 2018, focusing on function of human genomic sequences in complex human diseases by developing state-of-the-art tools.