Rate My Professor Chao-Gan Yan

Dr. Chao-Gan Yan is a professor in the Department of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences at Tsinghua University. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Science and Technology Beijing in 2006 and a Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience from Beijing Normal University in 2011. He completed postdoctoral research as a Research Scientist at the Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research and as a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at New York University. In 2015, he joined the Institute of Psychology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences as a professor, and in 2024 he became a tenured professor at Tsinghua University.

Dr. Yan’s research focuses on resting-state fMRI methodology and neuroimaging applications for the objective diagnosis and precise treatment of depression. He developed widely used analysis platforms including DPARSF, DPABI, DPABISurf, DPABIFiber, and DPABINet, which have received over 6,000 citations. He founded the Depression Imaging REsearch ConsorTium (DIRECT) to address challenges of small-sample studies through large-scale, multi-center collaboration and open data sharing. His work includes the RESTING project for a Chinese population brain imaging reference model, the Mind Flower project on psycho-physical interventions for depression, and the development of a Think-Aloud fMRI paradigm combined with deep learning for studying spontaneous thought. He has published over 100 papers in journals such as PNAS, Science Bulletin, and Molecular Psychiatry, with more than 50 as first or corresponding author. His publications have accumulated over 22,000 citations with an h-index of 47. He has been recognized as an Elsevier Highly Cited Chinese Researcher (2019–2023), ranked among Stanford’s Top 2% Scientists globally, received the 2021 Early Career Investigator Award from the Organization for Human Brain Mapping, and serves as Handling Editor for Imaging Neuroscience.