Currently, I’m a research scientist in system neuroscience, working at with Prof. Yurii Vlasov, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
I was born in Nanchang, the capital city of Jiangxi Province, a historical city located in inland southeastern China.
After high school, I was initially admitted by the College of Atmospheric Science, Lanzhou University. Following that, I passed the selection for Cuiying Honors College and began my studies in biological science. In addition to my formal education, I also attended a language summer school in Australia as the preparation for studying abroad in sophomore year and traveled abroad during my junior year to focus on computer science and engineering in Edinburgh, Scotland, which introduced me to programming. For both trips to Australia and Scotland, I was awarded the competitive Studying Abroad Scholarship, worth more than $15,000 overall.
My first research experience was the summer after freshman year. During this summer, I joined Professor Shengxiang Zhang’s group as an undergraduate researcher. In his lab, I lead a student research project about the roles of M1 microglia, a type of immune cell in the nervous system involved in strokes. During this time, I also assisted on a project studying ketamine’s toxic effects on microglia. The next summer, I attended the summer school at the Institute of Neuroscience, China Academy of Science, and consequentially was accepted into an internship in Dr. He Cui’s group to study human-machine interface. Here, I was trained to conduct electrophysiological experiments on primates, and I started learning to analyze massive biological signals. After finishing my curriculum, I began work in the lab of Professor Yurii Vlasov’s group at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to do my graduation thesis. During my time in Professor Vlasov’s group, I was hired as a full-time researcher for an additional year. In this lab, I performed electrophysiological experiments, animal surgery, data analysis and automated research systems in order to improve data collection. From this experience, I gained the ability to work on the engineering side of neuroscience.
My interest in automated experimental gadgets was raised from all the research experiences mentioned above. While performing experiments, I saw how easily automated systems could replace human technicians in numerous situations. For example, in Professor Vlasov’s lab, instead of moving the “walls” manually in behavioral experiments, I designed WaterMotor a closed-loop program to simulate wall movements as mice moved in real time.