Ying-Xian joined LEAPH as a doctoral student in the Charles E. Via, Jr. Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech in Fall 2023. He is also an integral part of the third cohort class in the Interdisciplinary Graduate Education Program in Infectious Disease. In LEAPH, Ying-Xian studies the ecology and evolution of antibiotic resistance and foodborne pathogens, chiefly Listeria, in the soil environment.

Ying-Xian received his B.S. in biochemistry from the National University of Malaysia and M.S. in Biology from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, under the mentorship of Prof. Hong-Yu Ou. His M.S. research strives to understand specific gene pairs (such as the toxin-antitoxin system) using bioinformatics and molecular biology approaches. Before his venture into LEAPH, Ying-Xian served a stint as a Research Officer in the largest population-based health cohort studies in Southeast Asia, where he conducted research in public health, focusing on both communicable and non-communicable diseases.

Ying-Xian enjoys travel, arts, literature, and cinema during his free time.

Ying-Xian is pronounced as “ing-shian”