Yan-Bin obtained an M.S. and Ph.D. in Robotics from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, where he was a graduate student from September 1990 through December 1997. His B.S. in Computer Science was received from University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) [alumni page], where he studied in the Special Class for the Gifted Young[少年班] (class story) from 1984 to 1988.

Before joining ISU he spent eight months as a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota. In Spring 1998 he instructed at the CMU Robotics Institute. From 1988 to 1990 he was an M.S. student of USTC and worked on temporal logic in the Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Yan-Bin came from Chengdu[成都] (pictures) in Sichuan[四川], China, where he was born in 1969. In case of your curiosity, his first name consists of two Chinese characters "Yan" (燕) and "Bin" (斌). The character 燕 means the swallow, reflecting his birth in the spring, a season when swallows return from the south. The character 斌 carries the good wish from his parents that he would have both intellectual achievement and good health when grown up.