He received his Ph.D. in 1991 at Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences in solid state physics and studied electron microscopy and crystallography. Since 2006, he has been a faculty member at Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California San Francisco. His laboratory is interested in methods developments of single particle cryo-EM and structural biology of integral membrane proteins and other macromolecular complexes, such as proteasome and ATP dependent chromatin remodeling complex.