Pan Lifeng received his Bachelor of Science degree from the Department of Chemistry of Fudan University in 2005 and his Ph.D. degree from the Department of Biochemistry of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) in 2010. He worked as a research assistant from August 2010 to February 2011 and as a research assistant professor from March 2011 to August 2012 in the Department of Life Sciences, HKUST. From January 2013 to April 2013, he worked as a visiting scholar at Harvard Medical School. In August 2012, he was appointed research fellow and project leader of Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He has also been selected as a candidate for the Shanghai Rising-Star Program (2013) and the Excellent Young Scientists Fund of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (2018).

He has long been devoted to the molecular mechanism of protein-protein interaction and protein-small molecule interaction. From the structural level, he explained the mechanism of action of many important proteins related to life activities and the pathogenic mechanism of related gene variants leading to human diseases. He has published more than 40 papers in international authoritative academic journals such asScience,Cell,Nature Communications,Autophagy, andPNAS, with more than 1,000 citations. He was awarded the Young Chemistry Award of the Chinese Chemical Society (2017) and the Shanghai Science and Technology System Youth May 4th Medal (2018). He also serves as Deputy Secretary General of the Committee on Biological Magnetic Resonance, Biophysical Society of China.