I grew up in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province in China, and enjoyed my childhood in a small city surrounded by lakes and mountains. Upon completing my secondary education in Wuxi, I went to the University for Nationalities, now called Minzu University of China, in Beijing, the capital of China. In college, I majored in Nutrition and Food Health, with the ambition of devoting my career to Public Health. But I developed a passion for the life sciences, and resolved to apply to graduate school in the field of biology. In 2000, I started my graduate study toward an M.S. in Zoology at the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. My research focus was on the diversity and complexity of bird song behavior. During my graduate study, I became more interested in the mechanisms behind the behavior than just the behavior itself. To investigate these mechanisms, I decided to pursue further education abroad, enrolling at the University of Washington in Seattle. There, I joined the Wingfield Lab as a graduate student studying towards a Ph.D in Biology. From 2003 to 2009, I researched the stress psychology of alpine birds living on the Tibetan Plateau, and investigated the role of avian encephalic photoreceptors in regulating vernal migration and seasonal breeding. I also worked as a teaching assistant for courses in Fundamental Physiology, Comparative Endocrinology, and Animal Reproduction and Behavior. From 2006 to 2008, I taught Introductory Physiology to pre-nursing students at the University of Washington. In 2007, I was awarded the UW Charlotte Cornell Crary Award for excellence in teaching.

After receiving my Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Washington at Seattle in 2009, I worked as a research scientist at the University of California, Davis before taking a position as a Post-doctoral scholar in the Cassone Lab in the Department of Biology of the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky. There, I worked on the biological clock in regulating avian vocalization. Upon completing my post-doc research in January of 2013, I came back to China and started my work as an associate professor at the Shannxi Institute of Zoology, Xian, where I continued my research on environmental endocrinology and avian chronobiology. In the same year, I was awarded research funding from the national science foundation of China as a principal investigator. Family commitments led me to leave my research position and return to my hometown, Wuxi in the summer of 2013. There, joined the Dipont Education Group and worked as a college counselor for high school students in both Wuxi and Changzhou. In addition to college counseling, I initiated a STEM program and mentored high school students in both field and lab research. Since the winter of 2015, I have served as Chief Liaison Officer and Head Counselor in the AP Centre, Changzhou Senior High School of Jiangsu Province.

I have taught AP Biology since 2018. I enjoy teaching biology, an interesting subject that reveals the relationship between humans and the environment we live in. With more than 20 years experience in the field of biology, I believe that mastering the scientific way of observing, thinking, analysing, and interpreting is a top priority for students. I deeply value the effort of cultivating students’ curiosity, not only in biology but also in making the connections between biology and other fields. I strongly encourage biology students to explore this subject beyond the textbook and classrooms.

In the past seven years, I have been counseling and teaching the students from our AP Centre, and really enjoying working with these motivated, passionate, and intelligent teenagers.