Dr. Yan is a GIScientist working on volunteered geographic information (VGI), social sensing, geo-crowdsourcing, and the related spatial big data analytics and computational social sciences. He is also interested in GIS educational research.

He is currently the Director of Taught Graduate/Continuing Education and Training programmes in Applied GIS, and a member of the GIS Unit and the Graduate Studies Committee of the Department of Geography. He is also the co-chair of the ISPRS Technical Commission Working Group on Human Behaviour and Spatial Interactions. He obtained his Ph.D. from the Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, and conducted his postdoc research at the Institute of Geography, Heidelberg University, Germany. He teaches courses about Geographic Information Science (GIS). He is also experienced in Surveying and Mapping. He worked as a land and marine surveying engineer between 2009 and 2010.