Yu Shi’s research work is mainly in the field of soil microbial distribution and functions. Over the past 9 years, he has investigated the biogeographic patterns of soil microbial communities (including bacteria, fungi and archaea) in Arctic, Tibetan Plateau and North China Plain soils. He had explored the relative contribution of distance and environmental variables to community composition, illustrated the effects of spatial scale on the relative role of stochasticity versus determinism in soil bacterial communities, and predicted soil bacterial diversity of Tibet on the map.