Dr. Xiao-Shan Yap is Assistant Professor of Innovation and Global Governance at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Faculty of Geosciences at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Yap is Principal Investigator and the director of a five-year research program (2024 - 2029) on ‘Planetary stewardship in view of earth-space sustainability’ (PLANETSTEWARDS), supported by a 1.5 million euro ‘Starting Grant’ from the European Research Council (ERC).  

An interdisciplinary social scientist, Yap focuses on the intersection of innovation and transitions, global governance, and development economics. She pioneered the concept of ‘earth-space sustainability’, which advocates for tackling challenges on Earth and in space in an integrative way as anthropogenic activities expand to outer space. In 2020, she founded ‘Earth-Space Sustainability’, the first science and policy initiative aiming at ensuring sustainable and functional earth-space systems in the future. In line with the initiative, she is also Co-Director of the Working Group on Earth-Space Governance at the Earth System Governance Project, Chair of the ‘2024 Earth-Space Symposium’, Senior Policy Advisor to the EPFL Space Center, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne in Switzerland, and (co)Chair of Commons in Space conference at the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC) from 2022 - 2023. Additionally, Yap is a senior member of the Steering Group at the Sustainability Transitions Research Network (STRN) and serves on the Editorial Board of the leading journal Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions. 

Among others, Yap's work had also been awarded a Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Starting Grant of 1.8 mil CHF in 2023, a Geneva Science-Policy Interface (GSPI) Impact Collaboration Grant, a Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship in 2017, and a Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship in 2015.