She is also a fellow at the Stanford ChEM-H institute. She was born in 1981 in Xi’an, the ancient capital city of China for many of the most important dynasties in the Chinese history and also where the terracotta warriors were uncovered. As a teenager, she was fascinated by Chinese history and literature until her sixth grade math teacher one day remarked: literature is for girls and math is for boys. At a rebellious age, she shifted her focus to math, physics, and chemistry, and eventually attended University of Science and Technology of China. There she majored in Polymer Physics in the Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Institute and earned a bachelor of engineering degree in 2003.