Yuan Gao is a Ph.D. candidate in Peking University (PKU) Law School. She received her LL.B. degree with honors from Peking University in 2009, and enrolled in the Ph.D. program in the same year. During her postgraduate study, she majored in criminal procedure law, with a main focus on Chinese judicial reform. With the support of her domestic advisor Prof. Jiancheng Wang, she chose the issue of case law reform in China as the topic of her Ph.D. dissertation. She has published three academic articles in domestic legal journals on the above topics, respectively discussing the reforms on Guiding Case System, statutory types of criminal evidence and the death penalty review procedure. She has also served for one year as the leader of the law student association on campus, which was established to provide a platform for offering academic lectures and communication between scholars and law students.