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I was born in Beijing and moved to Chicago with my parents at age 9. Because of my immigrant background and love of history, I'm studying immigrant participation during the 1960s in Great Britain and France at Cambridge in the MPhil program in Modern European History. As an undergraduate at Harvard, I studied History, Economics, and French, focusing on the history of empire and decolonization in the twentieth century. Outside the classroom, I edited for the undergraduate history research journal, sang in an all-female choir, and danced in different shows on campus. I hope to continue some of my extracurricular interests in England. After my time at Cambridge, I hope to use what I learned to pursue a career in legal academia and work in an international capacity on improving the rights of immigrant populations, particularly socioeconomic rights like education. I am excited to be part of the Gates community!

Our planet is undergoing simultaneous transformations, with climate change, habitat degradation, pollution, invasive species, disease, and overexploitation posing significant threats to the environment. To truly grasp the impact of these pressures on species, it is essential to delve into their long-term implications and understand how they synergistically interact and cascade within an ecosystem. These are questions that have fascinated me since my undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan. My research in India, where I collaborated with Professor Trevor Price at the University of Chicago, examined the effects of land use change on avian communities and morphology. During my master’s degree at the University of Edinburgh, I studied a different environmental stressor - microplastic pollution. I investigated its interplay with water temperature, aiming to understand how warmer oceans might influence microplastic uptake in sponges. At Cambridge, I will pursue a PhD in Plant Sciences under Professor David Edwards. I will be studying avian communities in Borneo to unravel temporal changes within logged and pristine forests and assess how climate change might exacerbate the impacts of land degradation.

Previous Education

The University of Edinburgh Marine Systems and Policies 2021
University of Michigan Ecology Evolution Biodiversity 2019