Jiayi Qin completed her degree in Physics from the Nanjing University in 2011. She was awarded PhD degree in 2016 at the University of Western Australia (OzGrav - UWA node). Her postgraduate research was focused on sensitivity enhancement of gravitational wave detectors via optomechanical interactions (thesis). During 2016 and 2021, she worked as a postdoctoral fellow at School of Physics, the Australian National University, for an ARC Laureate Fellowship project "Precision laser levitation for quantum metrology and gravitational sensing". 

Since 2022, Jiayi joined the Center for Graviational Astrophysics (CGA) at the Australian National University. She is working on developing optical instrumentation for precision interferometry for the science goals related to gravitational-wave detection. The projects involved are related to LIGO instrumentation, space-based missions, and third generation gravitational wave detectors such as NEMO.