Fan received his Ph. D. from Harvard University. He was a postdoctoral fellow at UC-San Francisco before coming to Carnegie as a staff researcher in 1995.

His laboratory studies the molecular mechanisms that govern mammalian development, using the mouse as a model. They use a combination of biochemical, molecular and genetic approaches to identify and characterize signaling molecules and pathways that control the development and maintenance of the musculoskeletal and hypothalamic systems.