[1] Sun was born in Putuo District, Zhoushan, Zhejiang in November 1976, the second of three sons.
[3] After high school, he entered Zhejiang University, where he graduated in 1999.
In December 2004 he earned his doctorate degree from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology under the supervision of Li Jianshu.
[4] From January to September 2005 he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich in Switzerland.
In September 2005 he became research associate at the Institute of Mathematics and Systems Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and was promoted to researcher in 2011.