Xiaolian Yuan

Sustainable Living Innovator - Life science, Data and IT professional

xlyuan@geenwaste.nl
+63 908 705 0797
Residential: Philippines
Permanent: Netherlands
www.linkedin.com/in/xiaolianyuan
www.geenwaste.nl

Summary

Passionate and self-driven Sustainable Urban Development Specialist with a rich history of initiating and leading cross-disciplinary projects aimed at affordable housing, technology integration, and urban improvement across diverse geographical and socio-economic contexts. Boasting a proven track record in leveraging data-driven insights and open-source technologies to advocate for sustainable practices and housing affordability. With extensive experience in both self-directed and collaborative settings in China, the Netherlands, and the Philippines, I bring a unique international perspective and a deep commitment to fostering sustainable, inclusive, and livable urban environments.

Work experience

Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands & Manila, Philippines
  • Zero-Waste Initiative: Championed a personal journey towards a zero-waste lifestyle by diligently applying the 5R's strategy, culminating in a notable 80% reduction in household waste.
  • Eco-Friendly and Affordable Home Renovation: Spearheaded a comprehensive, nearly waste-free home renovation, emphasizing affordable and sustainable housing solutions.
    • In-depth System Analysis: Conducted comprehensive examinations of house infrastructure and appliances at the outset of renovations and ensured the pipelines were intact, clean, and unobstructed for optimal and sustainable functionality.
    • Proactive Problem Solving: Identified and addressed the root causes of home issues, such as a concealed gap leading to roof leakage under extreme weather conditions, achieving substantial cost savings. 
    • Resourceful Reuse: Emphasized repurposing and recombination of existing materials, resulting in a significant 90% cost reduction, prolonging home longevity, and upholding a commitment to sustainability.
  • Biomass Recycling Ecosystem: Innovated a biomass recycling ecosystem targeting urban pollution mitigation and the promotion of sustainable agricultural practices through rural land fertilization, marking a stride towards environmental betterment.
  • Sustainable Living Accomplishments: Through meticulous application of sustainable living principles, achieved remarkable reductions in resource consumption: utilizing just 10% of the average amount of cleaning detergents, 25% of typical energy consumption, and 30% of standard water usage, all while maintaining minimal house cleaning and maintenance efforts.
  • Community Engagement: Volunteered at Fruittuin van West, Amsterdam, immersing in organic farming practices and supporting initiatives towards sustainable urban living.
  • Skills and Competencies: Resource maximization, DIY home renovations, Sustainable living consulting, Problem-solving, In-depth system analysis, Community engagement.

Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands & Manila, Philippines
  • Developed and managed a Django-based Knowledge Management System, serving as a centralized hub for various technical resources, a portal for household utilities and services, personal journals, and solutions for sustainable living.
  • Engineered a dynamic R script for intelligent mortgage selection, providing quick and thourough analysis of varying market and personal financial conditions, in order for identifying favorable mortage options.
  • Designed and implemented a CV application with the Django framework, providing an interactive and dynamic platform for professional CV presentation.
  • Acquired a deep understanding of AI techniques and refined skills in prompt engineering for daily practices. 
  • Utilized full-stack open-source technologies including Django, Python, R, CKeditor, MySQL, Bootstrap, CSS, HTML, JavaScript, Linux, Gunicorn, Nginx, GitHub, and AWS for dynamic, user-friendly applications that enhanced user experience and provided efficient solutions.

Location: China, the Netherlands, and the Philippines
  • Pandemic Research & Community Education: Conducted in-depth research on Covid-19, differentiating between facts and misconceptions. Shared vital insights with local communities to alleviate panic, caution against the excessive use of sterilizing chemicals, advise on prudent preventive measures, and provide guidance on actions to take if symptoms manifest.
  • Environmental Advisory: Provided specialized guidance on flood risk reduction strategies for local Chinese communities, integrating local knowledge with global best practices.
  • Agricultural Innovation Exploration: Investigated Israel's cutting-edge agricultural practices, assessing their adaptability and the potential benefits they could bring to developing countries.
  • Delved into the Dutch drinking water system: Gained comprehensive insights into the sources, treatment processes, and technologies underpinning Dutch tap water.

Location: Hefei, China and Manila, Philippines

  • Holistic Home Renovation & Analysis (Hefei, China, 2019):

    • Pioneered a comprehensive renovation of a modern apartment, unearthing foundational infrastructural issues beneath its luxurious exterior.
    • Diagnosed a widespread trend in the Chinese housing market: modern builds often concealed substandard foundational designs, jeopardizing long-term sustainability.
    • Tackled the intertwined challenges of mediocre construction and inefficient property management, resulting in exhaustive, yet often fruitless, maintenance efforts.
    • Witnessed the swift degradation of the apartment complex over time, emphasizing a pressing issue in the Chinese housing sector concerning building longevity and sustainability.
    • Against these odds, successfully executed the renovation, integrating insights from European standards and sustainable practices.

  • Rental House Renovation & Sustainability Enhancement (Manila, Philippines, 2015):

    • Successfully convinced the property owner to embark on a budget-wise renovation journey.
    • Spearheaded the green renovation blueprint, orchestrating project planning, design, and progress oversight, ensuring punctual finalization.
    • Established a tight-knit collaboration with the property owner, facilitating productive dialogue with contractors and ensuring efficient timeline management.
    • Slashed the projected renovation duration, reducing it from 6 months down to a swift 2 months.
    • Advocated for the integration of sustainable building materials, diminishing ecological footprints while embracing European aesthetic benchmarks.

Economic Research Department, Asian Development Bank (ADB), Manila, Philippines
  • Utilized various statistical techniques to analyze the agricultural measurement discrepancies for intra- and inter-country comparisons, aiding in the streamlining of measurements across multiple countries.
  • Introduced intuitive visualization techniques to present agricultural data, facilitating more accurate forecasting and informed policy decisions for stakeholders.
  • Proposed a logistic regression model to assess the impact of landowner demographics on measurements for future study.
  • Recommended enhancements to agricultural survey designs and implementation methods.

Strategy and Policy Department, ADB, Manila, Philippines
  • Ran the complete life cycle of the internal client satisfaction survey, including survey design, online software implementation (Qualtrics), survey distribution and troubleshooting, data administration, analysis and reporting.
  • Delivered an agile and easy to understand survey design based on patterns, allowing for feedback from stakeholders to be incorporated with minimal effort.
  • Improved the user experience of the survey by using advanced IT techniques.
  • Developed an approach for intuitive departmental scorecards with visualizations.
  • Initiated and provided an effective Qualtrics user training manual in modules for bank-wide applications.
  • Fostered stakeholder collaboration through iterative feedback integration, leading to more effective and actionable survey outcomes.

International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), Los Baños, Philippines
  • Piloted study on identifying a core subset of rice species which most closely represents IRRI’s rice bank collection, to facilitate research and development.
  • Introduced the IRRI team to the latest data pre-processing, data mining, machine learning and visualization technologies.
  • Transformed genetic data to digit data from scratch and developed algorithms that worked faster than traditional research methods.

Agendia B.V, Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • Managed and improved the consistency and integrity of a complex workflow of clinical trials and surveys from various sources into diagnostic indicators on patients’ cancer prospects.
  • Established a methodology for quality control and monitoring product anomalies.
  • Automated a data retrieval system for a wide range of future research purposes.
  • Key contributor to the design of the gene chip for Agendia’s next generation products.
  • Introduced technicians to perform gene chip data analysis and visualizations in R by themselves, removing their reliance on another team.

Microarray Department, Amsterdam University, Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • Managed and provided statistical consulting services and bioinformatics analysis to multiple projects from the Netherlands Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM). Tasks included project design, data collection, quality control, statistical analysis, data mining and data visualization, as well as preparation of project reports.
  • Defined the results framework, standardized the service reports for data processing, quality control, statistical modelling, and data analysis for each type of gene chip platforms.
  • Implemented the automatic generation of dynamic reports for customer service projects.
  • Piloted in the group using R script to generate massive figures to facilitate data mining.
  • Developed an approach for discriminating toxic and non-toxic chemicals using gene chip technology for potential biomarker (gene signature) identification.

Fungal Genomics Department, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands
  • Project on exploring the microorganism Aspergillus as cell factories for the industrial production of food ingredients, pharmaceuticals and enzymes.
  • Piloted big data (gene chip) processing, quality control, normalization and statistical analysis for the group.
  • Identified a gene regulator for improvement of the metabolic pathway enzyme production.
  • Discovered an approach to improve the genetic system for controlled gene expression in microorganisms. Developed a novel genetic screening method for identifying genes in carbohydrate metabolisms.
  • Provided training to collaboration partners. Supervised MSc and BSc students during their graduation projects.
  • Initiated a successful collaboration between Leiden and institutions in China which involved senior stakeholders.

Seed Science Department, Anhui Agricultural University, Hefei, China
  • Gave lectures in Seed Physiology, Storage & Processing and Marketing of Agro Products.
  • Supervised students in designing and analysing their experiments in seed science.
  • Provided training courses to the agriculture sectors in Anhui province, PRC.
Education
Certificates & Courses
  • Deep Learning (2023 & 2018), Machine Learning (2023 & 2017), AI for everyone (2023)
  • Structured thinking (2020), Blockchain (2019), Financial Markets (2018), Financing for Development (2017)
  • Environmental Science (2017), Project Management (2017), Business Intelligence (2012)
Skills

Professional skills

Soft skills

Technical skills

Languages
Hobbies
Miscellaneous

  • 2016 -2023. Participated in numerous tech meet-ups in Europe and North America, covering Fintech, Data, IT, Cloud and AI to keep abreast of emerging technologies and their applications.
  • 2022. Volunteered with Prikactie Amsterdam West, an initiative aiming for clean street in Amsterdam.
  • 2021. Volunteered at Fruittuin van West Amsterdam, a community-driven ecological agriculture initiative that emphasizes economically sustainable business practices.
  • 2017. Accompanied a team of aquatic ecology experts from the Chinese Academy of Sciences on a visit to Wageningen, Netherlands, gaining insights into the Dutch river ecosystem planning and restoration projects.
Publications

  • 2018. Adequate housing for dwelling but not for commodification, published on LinkedIn (link)
  • 2011. Finding maximal transcriptome differences between reprotoxic and non-reprotoxic Phthalate responses in rat testis, Journal of Applied Toxicology 31(5): 421-430 
  • 2010. Serious complications in gene-expression studies with stress perturbation: An example of UV-exposed p53- mutant mouse embryonic fibroblasts, Transcription 1:3, 159-164 
  • 2008. Identification of InuR, 2 new Zn(II)2Cys(6) transcriptional activator involved in the regulation of inulinolvtic enzymes in Aspergillus niger, Molecular Genetics and Genomics, 279(1): 11-26 
  • 2008. Aspergillus niger genome wide analysis reveals a large alpha-glucan acting enzymes with unexpected expression profiles, Molecular Genetics and Genomics, 279(6): 545:561 
  • 2008. Construction of inulin and starch specific cDNA expression libraries of Aspergillus niger, published in Xiaolian Yuan's PhD thesis (https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/12572), p25-37
  • 2008. A novel screening method for the identification of genes involved in sugar signalling in Aspergillus niger, published in Xiaolian Yuan's PhD thesis (see link above). p143-157 
  • 2007 (Co-author). Molecular and biochemical characterization of a novel intracellular invertase from Aspergillus niger with transfructosylating activity, Eukaryotic cell, 6(4): 674-681
  • 2007 (Co-author). Two novels, putatively cell wall-associated and glycosylphosphotidylinositot-anchored alpha-glucanotransferase enzymes of Aspergillus niger, Eukaryotic cell, 6(7): 1178.1188 
  • 2006. Database mining and 'transcriptional regulation of genes encoding inulin modifying enzymes in Aspergillus niger, Microbiology, 152:3061-3073
  • 2000. Effects of soil-film cover on soil ecological effect and growth of transplanted cotton, Journal of Anhui Agricultural University, 27(2)