I was born in Henan , a province in central China, went to college in Kunming , a beautiful city in southwest of China, and did my master's study in Beijing , the capitol in the northeast.

I had never been to the sea before I joined a group focusing on ocean data assimilation. For my master's thesis, I worked on deriving global ocean surface currents from the Lagrangian trajectory of Argo floats. My college and I developed a small model to predict currents from Argo's GPS locations and got quite good result. In October 2006 my group hosted GODAE (Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment ) symposium in Beijing and I decided to pursue my PhD in the US after been inspired by many passionate scientists at the conference.

In IMCS I have been working with Prof. Bob Chant to gain a comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of urban estuaries. After studying the driving mechanism of currents in Hudson River we have been looking at how depth change from systematic dredging affects flow and salinity field in Newark Bay near New York City. We have found that tidal currents, exchange flow and salinity in the lower part of the bay have changed greatly after the system was deepened by about 3-4 meters since 2004.

My interests in the long term lies in a through understanding of dynamics of estuaries, especially the role of tidal mixing, dispersion and sediment transport in order to help the local government making informed decisions on engineering and environmental regulations.

I was also very fortunately involved in LTER (Long Term Ecosystem Research ) in 2009 and went on a cruise off the coast of Western Antarctic Peninsula with Prof. Oscar Schofield's group. And finally learned the wild characters of the ocean.

In my spare time I enjoy having fellowship with people from my church, talking with my parents and younger brother in China and lots of other things.

1. Reading books that inspire or challenge me
2. Growing plants
3. Cooking nutritious and easy dishes for one and baking different sweets
4. Hiking
5. Singing and swimming (unfortunately haven't mastered to do both at the same time)