Ye is a professor at East China Normal University (ECNU) with a Ph.D. He is currently a doctoral supervisor, the Vice President of the School of International Chinese Studies, and the Secretary General of the Professional Committee for Teacher Development of the International Society for Chinese Language Teaching. He has been selected by the New Century Talents Support Program of the Ministry of Education and the Pujiang Talent Program of Shanghai.
He is mainly engaged in linguistics and applied linguistics, international Chinese language education, Chinese phonetics and Chinese grammar. He led the Research on the Rhythm of Contemporary Chinese language, a project of National Social Science Fund, and was rated as Excellent, and the Shanghainese-Mandarin Apical Intermediary Corpus, a planning project of Shanghai Philosophy and Social Science, and was rated as Excellent. He has participated in one national social science key project and two general projects. He has published five academic monographs, namely, Grammatical Function of the Rhythm of Chinese Sentences (East China Normal University Press, 2001), Research on the Rhythm of Contemporary Chinese language (Shanghai Bookstore Press, 2008), Case Analysis and Review of International Chinese Language Teaching (Foreign Language Education and Research Press, 2015), Measures for Foreign Students' Chinese Phonetic Learning (second author, Language Publishing House, 1997), and Phonological Testing in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (second author, China Social Sciences Press, 2003). He has delivered dozens of academic papers, including Research on the Implementation of Computer-Assisted Mandarin Proficiency Test, Analysis of the Stage Characteristics of Apical Intermediary in Shanghainese-Mandarin, Reanalysis of the Syllable Structure of Mandarin, and Acquisition of Plosives and Affricates Reflected by the Transformation of Children's Songs. The Analysis of the Stage Characteristics of Apical Intermediary in Shanghainese-Mandarin won the second prize in the category of thesis of the 10th Shanghai Outstanding Achievement Award in Philosophy and Social Sciences, and the Grammatical Function of Chinese Rhythm won the third prize in the category of publication of the 6th Shanghai Outstanding Achievement Award in Philosophy and Social Sciences.
He offers courses including Introduction to Linguistics, Theory and Practice of Teaching Chinese as a Second Language, Case Studies of Chinese Language Teaching, Experimental Phonetics, etc. He has taught at Cornell University, University of Virginia, and Wellesley University. The Construction of International Chinese Language Education Case Base and Exploration of Case Teaching hosted by him won the first prize of Shanghai Teaching Achievement Award, and the teaching reform projects he participated in won the second prize of Shanghai Teaching Achievement Award three times. He was also awarded the ECNU Teaching Contribution Award and ECNU Graduate Teaching Award.