Zhao Yun received his Bachelor of Science degree in Microbiology from the School of Microbiology of Shandong University in 1992 and his Doctor of Science degree in Molecular Cell Biology from the School of Life Sciences of Peking University in 2001. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School from 2001 to 2004, and at UT Southwestern Medical Center from 2004 to 2008. Since June 2008, he has been working as a research fellow and principal investigator at the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences.