Yifan received his B.S. in Chemistry and B.A. in Molecular & Cell Biology from UC Berkeley. There, he worked with Prof. John Hartwig on developing copper-catalyzed C–H amination reactions and with Prof. Jay Keasling on developing biosynthetic platforms for producing biorenewable plastics. Yifan joined the Swager Group in the fall of 2024 as a graduate student in organic chemistry.