Profile

I am a 25-year-old PhD student studying in The University of Edinburgh. Before I came to UK, I finished my Bsc and Msc in China. Science makes me happy, encouraging me to discovery something amazing, and something which might broaden the edge of human knowledge. Besides in the lab, recently I am engaged in school choir to receive some musical training and gave a performance, something I have never done before. I also attended a vegetarian society and become more interested in vegetarian and vegan food. Every week we would hold a potluck with different themes (Green, Rainbow, East African, etc), which is fantastic! I am also quite interested in sports (Tennis and Table tennis) and won several prizes during my Msc in China.

My work contains two aspects: one is creating artificial human tissue, the other one is making cell assembly (something like building Lego), both of which are associated with chemistry and biology. For the artificial human tissue, try to imagine our bones. If someone got a car accident and his bones were damaged, we see there is an urgent need to repair his injuried bones. And now our artificial bone would be happy to make some contributions. It will be transplanted into the injury sites by surgery operations and replace some basic functions of original bones, such as supporting human weight. This is exactly the main purpose I try to achieve. Basically, the artificial bone would be composed of strong scaffold and human cells to make its role. And my job is to creating new molecules and materials for scaffold fabrication, and seed bone cells into the scaffold to make it behave like a real bone. Sounds fantastic, right? Then, for the cell lego, you might know that cell membrane have some chemical groups as well. So, this novel idea is bascially treating cells like chemical reagents and using cells to perform reactions. I swear it’s amazing.

Normally an experiment contains three aspects: experimental design, experiment process and data analysis. And my typical day for research is focused on these three aspects. I will give you an example. Listen, now I have two chemicals A and B with different functional groups. To continue my research, I would like to create chemical C with linking A and B through some chemical reactions. The first step is to search for paper published on journals online to figure out experimental details for this reaction (chemical amount, time, temperature, etc.), and write  those down to make sure every step is safe and correct. The next step is preparing for the needed reaction container and equippment in the lab, and starting the stardard procedure under the protect of saftey equipment. Afterwards, once we get the compound after finishing the whole reaction, we would usually use some powerful analysis instrument (Infrared Spectrocopy) to make sure the molecular structure of our compound is exactly we want, and we collect data to make it clear and beautiful. Congratulations, we make it! All the contents above is my typical research day. Besides, after going back to home, I  turn into a “professional” cook to entertain myself, usually Chinese cuisine (hotpot, tofu, etc), and some Japanse Sushi and Italian pasta as well! Then, going to gym 2-3 times a week, and having a nice sleep. Last but not least, I make two pieces of British breakfast in the morning everyday, one for me, and one for my girlfriend! Hahaha