Prior to his vice-chancellorship, Tuan also served as distinguished visiting professor and director of the Institute for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine.

Tuan continues to serve as the director of Center for Cellular and Molecular Engineering at Pitt, despite his current academic position in Hong Kong.

[3][4][5][6] Born in Hong Kong to Republic of China Army veterans, Tuan completed primary and secondary education at St. Joseph's Anglo-Chinese School, and then attended briefly the Queen's College without sitting the matriculation examination.

In 1988, he moved to Thomas Jefferson University, where he held joint appointments in the departments of orthopaedic surgery and biochemistry and molecular biology.

[3][9] Eight years later, he and his wife, fellow NIH scientist Cecilia Lo, were recruited to the University of Pittsburgh,[10] where Tuan joined the departments of orthopaedic surgery and bioengineering and became the founding director of the newly established Center for Cellular and Molecular Engineering.

[17] This earned Tuan the condemnation of several police groups, who wrote that CUHK had "reduced itself to a hub of anti-China, Hong Kong independence forces".

[3] Among their efforts is a research project aimed at using 3D printing technology to restore function of joints damaged by diseases such as osteoarthritis,[23] and work funded in 2016 to study model systems on the International Space Station.