 Yuan completed his medical training at the Suzhou Medical College in 1983, and received his doctoral degree from the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College in 1993.He completed his postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (1988-1991).Yuan began his academic career as a Research Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (1993-1998) where he established a translational research project using lung tissues and cells isolated from patients with idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension to study pathogenic mechanisms of the disease.