Shi Yan studied at the Soochow University between 2001 and 2008 in China and received his BSc in Biotechnology and MSc in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. He was a Marie Curie early stage fellow within the EuroGlycoArrays consortium and obtained his PhD on N-glycosylation of C. elegans at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna in 2012. After four years as a postdoctoral researcher, working on further aspects of nematode N-glycomics, he became a principal investigator at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna in 2017. He is a project leader of a Stand-Alone project supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and the joint Top-Vet-Science project funded by the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna (2021-2025).