Full Research Description
I am from Beijing, China. I graduated from Tsinghua University in 2024 with a B.S. in Biological Sciences. For my undergraduate thesis in Dr. Yi Zhong’s lab, I investigated reversal learning in Drosophila. Using in vivo two-photon imaging combined with acetylcholine GRAB sensors, I recorded neural activity during olfactory reversal learning, focusing on the mushroom body γ lobe. This work aimed to determine how behavioral flexibility is encoded in synaptic plasticity dynamics across distinct neural compartments.
In the summer of 2023, I interned in Dr. Sinisa Hrvatin’s lab at the Whitehead Institute, MIT. There, I investigated how a preoptic hypothalamic circuit that regulates torpor also influences metabolic flexibility in mice.
I am currently a Ph.D. student in Biological Sciences at Columbia University. My research focuses on the brain–body axis, with a particular interest in the vagus nerve.
Outside of my research, I am also interested in computational biology and systems neuroscience. In 2025, I served as a teaching assistant for the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory summer course “Statistical Analysis of Genome-Scale Data.”
