I was born and raised in a small city in northern China, with a climate similar to Salt Lake City’s. After completing my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in China, I moved to Marseille in southern France to pursue my PhD. It was also during my time in France that I learnt to ski! My PhD research focused on using deep learning, a form of artificial intelligence (AI), to help diagnose Alzheimer’s disease through medical imaging. During those years, I discovered how much I enjoyed research and the process of bringing a study through to publication. For me, it felt like building with Lego, bringing small pieces together, sometimes taking sections apart and rebuilding them, until something coherent emerged. Seeing my works become published papers was deeply rewarding, and I decided to pursue a career in academia. In 2020, I moved north, this time to London, to join Dr. Yinyin Yuan’s group at the Institute of Cancer Research as a postdoc. There, I began working with digital pathology images and turned my attention to cancer research. When Dr. Yuan moved her lab to MD Anderson Cancer Center, I followed her across the Atlantic to Houston, Texas, in 2023. I worked there first as an instructor and later as a Principal Data Scientist. In September 2026, I establish my own lab in the Department of Oncological Sciences at the U and Huntsman Cancer Institute. My research focuses on computational pathology and the integration of multi-omics data using AI. I was drawn here by the opportunities to work closely with computational scientists, clinicians and biologists. The beautiful landscape and access to outdoor activities certainly helped, too!

My advice to graduate students is to stay curious, resilient, and patient. Research can be frustrating, and progress may sometimes feel slow or uncertain. When the work feels difficult, it is because you are climbing uphill. If you care about the questions you are studying, give yourself time, seek support when you need it, and keep going. Your direction will become clearer as you learn, even if you cannot yet see where the path will lead.