Yap is pioneering a scientific research agenda on Earth-Space Sustainability to specify opportunities and challenges for a sustainable planetary future as anthropogenic activities expand into outer space. While space-based technologies are quickly shaping next-generation infrastructures that may accelerate sustainable development on Earth, an exponential rise in Space activities has led to new anthropogenic challenges such as increasing Space debris in Earth’s orbit. Mismanagement of an increasingly congested orbit will in turn severely disrupt daily operations on Earth when space-based infrastructures like navigation, telecommunication, and observation no longer function well.

Yap is a senior Steering Group member of the international Sustainability Transitions Research Network (STRN), a Research Fellow of the global research alliance Earth System Governance Project, Co-Chair of Commons in Space 2022 conference under the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC); and a member of the Ostrom Workshop Space Governance Working Group.

In 2020, Yap founded the Earth-Space Sustainability research initiative aiming at ensuring a sustainable and functional Earth-Space system in the future. Besides working alongside internationally leading scientists and scholars, Yap has been accompanied by a group of young, curious, and bright researchers who contribute their time and effort to the overall endeavor. Their names and affiliations are listed below.