Professor Yao received his doctorate degree from Peking Union Medical College in 1999. He has been committed to the diagnosis and treatment of complex and difficult arrhythmias for a long time, and is an international leader in the fields of atrial fibrillation, ventricular tachycardia, sudden death and syncope. The catheter ablation he has completed is the largest series in the world, most of which are patients from all over the country and abroad with various complex and difficult or failed operations in other hospitals.

Due to his academic achievements, he became the first Chinese scholar to give lectures at the International Heart Rhythm Academic Conference, the Ventricular Tachycardia Conference, and the European, American, East Asian, and Southeast Asian Regional Conferences. He has demonstrated surgeries in more than ten countries in Europe, America, Southeast Asia, and South Asia, and has accepted more than 300 specialists from the United States, Britain, Norway, Australia, Japan, South Korea, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and other countries to come to China for further study and training. He has also opened a training course for cardiac rhythm specialists from countries along the Belt and Road to help improve their cardiac rhythm diagnosis and treatment level. He has undertaken a number of national 15th, 11th, and 12th Five-Year Plan research projects and multiple international multicenter studies, and presided over a major chronic disease project in the 13th Five-Year Plan. Professor Yao serves as deputy editor-in-chief and editorial board member of many academic journals at home and abroad. Professor Yao is currently the vice chairman of the Chinese Medical Association's Cardiac Rhythm Committee and the vice chairman of the Chinese Society of Biomedical Engineering's Cardiac Pacing and Electrophysiology Branch. He is the chairman of the Asian Heart Rhythm Association (AHRA). He has been awarded the title of National Hundred Thousand Talents, Young and Middle-aged Experts with Outstanding Contributions, and the State Council Special Allowance. He has been selected into the National Health Science Popularization Expert Database.