Ying-Xian joined the LEAPH and the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech as a doctoral student in Fall 2023. He is an integral part of the third cohort class in the Interdisciplinary Graduate Education Program in Infectious Disease.

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

Ying-Xian is pronounced as “ing-shian”