Professor Bernard Yan is the President of the Stroke Society of Australasia which is the society which links all stroke researchers of Australasia. He is also a practising Neurologist and Endovascular Neurointerventionist in Royal Melbourne Hospital, Australia. His clinical expertise is in stroke intervention and other cerebrovascular diseases.  He is academic professor of neurology at the University of Melbourne. His major research interest is in machine learning and its application in cerebrovascular disease and other subspecialty fields of neurology. He supervises together with the Engineering Department PhD research students with a focus on Artificial Intelligence enabled Internet of Things (IOT).

He has published 207 academic papers in peer-reviewed medical journals (SCI) achieving an h-index of 39 with > 10000 citations. The clinical trial papers include 4 published in the New England Journal of Medicine. These 4 papers have a major impact on changing stroke management guidelines. Other clinical papers include publications in Lancet, Lancet Neurology and Circulation.

The impact of the major publications of his research group in New England Journal of Medicine has resulted in changing 2015 guidelines (American Heart Association/American Stroke Association) for management of acute ischemic stroke supporting the adoption of endovascular thrombectomy as first-line treatment.

He has completed the supervision of Mr. Nandakishor Desai (PhD Student ID: 773853) on the research topic of machine learning in the diagnosis of stroke imaging. Currently, he supervises Dr. Angelos Sherobeam (PhD Student ID: 178597) as the primary supervisor on the topic of machine learning and stroke. He is co-supervisor to Ms. Shreyasi Datta (PhD student ID: 947650) on the research topic of machine learning and smart devices.

He has mentored as Primary Supervisor 34 Honours Science Students from 2006 onwards. All have completed their honours theses. In addition, he has mentored as Primary Supervisor 28 Neurology Research Fellows from 2008 onwards. All have completed their research fellowship in various topics within the field of Stroke and Neurology.

He is a salaried associate editor of Journal of STROKE which is the international peer-reviewed flagship journal for the stroke research community. He is also a reviewer for other international peer-reviewed journals in the field of neurology and radiology.

He is the founding organizer of the Australia and China Training Initiative of Neurology (ACTION) programme. The programme is in its 10th year of operations and has successfully trained over 300 young neurologists from China.