Professor Yan Bao is a doctoral supervisor and associate professor at the School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Peking University. She is a member of the Center for Human Sciences at LMU Munich, a visiting professor at the Institute of Medical Psychology at LMU Munich, and a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Her research focuses on time perception, spatial attention, and neuroaesthetics. Through cross-cultural research, she has examined the relationship between language experience and temporal discrimination. In spatial attention, her behavioral, EEG, MEG, and fMRI studies have contributed to the understanding of functional separation between central and peripheral visual attention.