Yirang Lim obtained her Ph.D. at Erasmus University, Rotterdam in March 2021 with the thesis titled "Impacts of Smart City Development: Experience of South Korea." Her thesis studied the positive and negative impacts of smart city developments on economic, environmental, social, governance, and technological sustainability in Korean cities. Her thesis was published as three academic articles in international peer-reviewed journals.
Before her Ph.D., Yirang Lim worked as a junior researcher at Korea Research Institute for Local Administration and Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements. 
She also holds two master's degrees in urban planning from Erasmus University, Rotterdam and Seoul National University. 

Her main research interest is how government policies influence urban sustainability. Her previous research projects include the impact of smart city development on urban sustainability and identifying principles of co-governance to activate nature-based solutions.
More recently, in light of climate change and the need for an immediate transition, she is interested in the possibility of resilient infrastructures. Her research focuses on evaluating resilient infrastructure initiatives in terms of resiliency in different domains including economy, environment, society, and governance.