Yanlin pursued her undergraduate degree at Chongqing Jiaotong University from 2010-2014, specializing in Water Supply and Drainage Engineering. Then in 2020, she studied at the Sorbonne University in France, majoring in hydrology, hydrogeology, and environmental geochemistry, focusing on urban stormwater management.

Yanlin joined the modelEAU team in 2023 as Peter Vanrolleghem's PhD student in wastewater-based epidemiology. The project focuses on modelling and analyzing the suspended matter behaviour in urban sewer systems and the pathogens attached to them to provide better predictions of wastewater-based epidemics.