Fan’s research focuses on urban land use, transportation planning, and the impacts of urban planning on human health and social equity. Her recent work focuses on public transportation development, emotional well-being in cities, and community-engaged transportation equity research. She has published over 100 refereed articles, book chapters, and research reports in high-impact outlets across multiple disciplines, including Transportation Research Part A, Part C & Part F and Transportationin the field of transportation; Environment and Planning A & B, Journal of Planning Literature, Journal of Planning Education and Research, and Urban Studies in the field of urban planning; and Social Science & Medicine and American Journal of Preventive Medicine in the field of public health. She has directed and co-directed over 40 research projects, attracting more than 20 million U.S. dollars in research funding. She was an invited speaker for over 90 events. Her award-winning work appeared in leading media outlets including the Time Magazine, National Geographic, and the Atlantic.

Fan is the PhD Program Director of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at University of Minnesota since 2019. She is responsible for strategic direction, academic personnel, and curriculum planning of the school-wide PhD program that involves over 20 faculty members and 35-40 Ph.D. students. Fan is also the founding director of the Global Transit Innovation program (GTI) at the University of Minnesota since 2015. GTI is a global research and education program that promotes international collaboration opportunities for students, researchers, and practitioners in the field of public transportation planning. In addition, Fan serves as Co-Chair of the Global Planning Education Committee at the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) since 2019. ACSP is the scholarly association of over 100 university planning departments in the U.S. and Canada.

Fan holds multiple editorial leadership positions. She has served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Transport and Land Use (JTLU) since 2019 and Managing Editor of the Urban Studies journal since 2020. Established in 2008, JTLU is a flagship journal at the intersection of transportation and land use planning. Established in 1964, Urban Studies is the leading international journal for urban scholarship. As one of the four Managing Editors at Urban Studies, Fan will serve as the Editor-in-Chief of the Urban Studies journal every four years starting in 2022.

Besides being an accomplished academic scholar and leader, Fan is a successful inventor and entrepreneur. She is the lead inventor of the Daynamica technology, featuring a smartphone-human hybrid intelligence system to measure and shape human behavior and well-being. The technology was granted a US Patent (#9763055B2) in 2017. In 2018, she co-founded Daynamica, Inc. and served as the company’s founding CEO. Since its establishment, Daynamica, Inc. has had a track record of developing smartphone apps to collect human behavior and well-being data for academic institutions and government agencies.

PhD in City and Regional Planning (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2007)

BS in Transportation Engineering (Southeast University, 2001)