This fall, Wicks Lab welcomes Yijing Li as graduate student. The following is a short interview with our newest member. Welcome, Gin!

Q: Where did you study? What was your favorite class?

A: I studied at UC Santa Barbara. My favorite class was the Mineralogy and Optical Mineralogy class.

Q: What drew you to mineral physics?

A: So I was in Geophysics emphasis. Our department is a small department, and there were only four professors in geophysics, heavily focusing on seismology. In my undergraduate study, I did various research, including ambient noise (a subfield of seismology), tsunami simulation (at University of Tokyo for summer research internship) and mineral separation (rock crushing, water table). Since my interest was in Mineralogy, I just started asking around and checking departmental websites, so I started to know Mineral Physics. As I know more, I get excited by the idea that we can actually make the deep earth/planetary material by making them in lab. And mineral physics is a gateway to expose me to various interesting topics, such as mineralogy of meteorite impacts and nanomineralogy (SEM image super chill).

Q: If you could meet any scientist from history, who would it be, and why?

A: So I don’t know much about historical scientists. I think microscope is a cool invention. I may be curious about how people in ~1600 could have thought about that. Meeting scientists like Einstein is not that fun, you may end up getting too smart and ending with your brain stolen.

Q: What is your favorite writing utensil?

A: You meant what pen I usually use? I use Mitsubishi UB-150 most often, because it doesn’t have much resistance, so smooth and the writing looks great. I also use pilot p-500, which is unbreakable. I literally dropped a pen like 20,30 times by accident, it’s still working well, with only a few scratches on the surface.