Yunan Gao joined the Institute of Modern Optics at School of Physics at PKU as an assistant professor in tenure-track in September, 2017. He previously worked as postdoctoral fellows at MIT (2014.9-2017.9) and at the Institute of Physics (IOP), Chinese Academy of Science (2012.12-2014.8). He obtained doctoral degree from Delft University of Technology (TUDelft), the Netherlands, master's degree from Peking University, and bachelor's degree from Shanxi University.

His major was in Physics, and he started scientific research with the project of studying molecule alignment dynamics under intensive ultrafast laser field using femtosecond lasers in his master's study, during which he started learning ultra-fast detection techniques and spectroscopies. After graduated from PKU, he joined the Optoelectronic Material group at Chemical Engineering Department at TUDelft, where he started new adventure into semiconductor nanocrystals, gained skills and experience in synthesis and assembly of colloidal nanocrystals, and continued broadening his knowledge in ultrafast techniques and spectroscopies. After obtained his Doctoral degree, he joined Xiulai Xu's group at IOP as an International Young Scholar fellow, where he got into the research field of cavity-electron dynamics and got experience in using cryostat and superconductive magnetec system. In following, in William Tisdale's group at Chemical Engineering at MIT, he worked as a posdoctoal associate on the projects of self-assembly of nanoctystals and the development of Phase-Sensitive Nonlinear Optical Imaging technique.

He likes sports in general, like swimming, rock climbing, cycling, hiking, skiing and snowboarding, and basketball. He also likes watching movies and reading books.