I grew up in China, went to England for my undergrad, now I'm attending grad school in New York, enjoying the city while trying to figure out how brains work 🧠👩‍🔬🐣

My friends describe me as a very bubbly, friendly, curious and funny person, and I'm always excited to meet new people!

✈️I love solo traveling, as I get to meet people from different walks of life and hear about their life stories.

The first time I solo travelled was when I was 16, I flew from China to the West Coast of America and backpacked across national parks for 20 days. Despite knowing very little English back then, I met some life-long friends on the road. It was a wild but truly life-changing journey, and I learnt to appreciate views that are very different from mine, and to "stay curious, and not judgmental".

This inspired me to do many more solo travels later on, and I made some very fond memories in Alaska, Mexico, and the "forbidden" part of China - Tibet and Xinjiang.

Interests

• photography
• walking
• flowers
• piano
• opera
• backpacking
• badminton
• ecology
• science
• rivers
• mushrooms
• playing piano
• cooking and baking
• chinese chess
• building things
• chinese tea ceremony
• neurosurgery
• caligraphy
• coffee brewing
• writing video essays

Music, Movies, and Books

🎶 I play the piano, recently I’m getting more into impressionist classical music, and have been learning to play some Debussy, Chopin and Ravel
🎬 Some of my all-time favourite movies are: the Life of Pi, Casablanca, Call me by your name, Interstellar, Spirited Away, Pachinko, Harry Potter, and the theory of everything.
📚 I mostly read non-fiction books in natural history, philosophy of science, sociology, though I do start reading more fictions and literature.
Some books I recently read and resonate with are the Myth of Sisyphus, Steppenwolf, Flatland (a fun little novel written by a 18th century priest which gives a deep insight on our limitations to imagine higher dimensionality), Ignorance (a short book written by a professor I taught with that transformed my view on science, so much so that I’m helping him to restart a class to teach about Ignorance), In search of Lost time by Proust (the Madeleine cake episode touches me so deeply, and really captures precisely why I’m so interested in our own episodic memories and doing a PhD on it)…

Teach, Learn, Share

I'm a memory researcher, and our lab uses chickadees (a tiny lil bird!🐥) as a model to understand human episodic memory. I’m always excited to teach people about all the cool brain, consciousness and bird stuff. The only issue is I might not be able to shut up once you get me started..!

What I Can Share with Hosts

🍱 I cook well, especially Asian cuisines. Let me know what you like to eat, and I will see what I can do.

🍵 I'm very enthusiastic about tea and coffee brewing, and I'm bringing with me a collection of some very fine speciality Chinese teas that you most likely have never tried before; I can host a proper tea ceremony in your home :)

Countries I’ve Visited

Cambodia, China, England, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Macao, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, Scotland, South Korea, Switzerland, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States, Wales

Countries I’ve Lived In

China, United Kingdom, United States