About Me

Welcome! This is Yan, currently working as a Research Assistant Professor in the Division of Environment and Sustainability (ENVR), Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), hosted by Prof. Zhe Wang. Prior to HKUST, I worked as postdoc at College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering (CESE), Peking University from 2022 to 2025, hosted by Prof. Qi Chen.

I am specializing in atmospheric chemistry, with a particular focus on the formation mechanisms, molecular composition, and environmental impacts of organic aerosols (OA). My research integrates field observations and laboratory experiments to understand how volatile organic compounds (VOCs) oxidize in the atmosphere and form OA in different environments. I work extensively with advanced mass spectrometry techniques, including aerosol mass spectrometers (LTOF-AMS, Soot-particle AMS, TOF-ACSM, Q-ACSM) and chemical ionization mass spectrometers (Iodide-CIMS with FIGAERO, Nitrate-CIMS, PTR-QiTOF).

I received my Ph.D. in Environmental Science from Peking University in 2022, where I worked under the supervision of Prof. Qi Chen. Prior to my Ph.D., I completed my B.Sc. in Environmental Chemistry from Nanjing University in 2016, supervised by Prof. Xueyuan Gu and Prof. Cheng Gu.

My recent work examines (1) OA formation under extreme-heat conditions, (2) refined source apportionment of OA with multi-instrument datasets, (3) multiphase Chemistry of SOA in urban and mountain areas including processes in aerosols and clouds, (4) long-term trends of urban OA sources using 2016–2024 datasets, (5) coupling ambient data and machine learning to explore driving factors of SOA formation.