Yifan grew up in Zhejiang, China. She likes painting, hiking, and watching movies when she is not in the lab.

Yifan came to the States and joined Prof. Aimin Liu’s research group as a Ph.D. student at Georgia State University in Fall 2015. Later, she relocated to the University of Texas at San Antonio with the Liu Lab in 2016 and completed her Ph.D. study there. During her study in San Antonio, she developed a keen interest in mechanistic enzymology, structural biology, and bioinorganic chemistry. Her research spans a wide range of subjects, covering heme and nonheme iron-dependent enzymes related to oxidative stress, amino acid metabolism, C–H/C-F bond cleavage, natural product biosynthesis, and protein cofactor biogenesis.