Hou Fajian received his bachelor's degree from Wuhan University in 1995 and his Ph.D. degree from the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, CAS in 2001. From November 2001 to January 2012, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at UT Southwestern Medical Center. Since February 2012, he has been working as a research fellow and principal investigator at the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, CAS.