{"id":162392,"date":"2020-07-02T10:06:46","date_gmt":"2020-07-02T14:06:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?post_type=school-college-post&p=162392"},"modified":"2020-07-23T10:53:05","modified_gmt":"2020-07-23T14:53:05","slug":"meet-graduate-student-yuxiang-wang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2020\/07\/meet-graduate-student-yuxiang-wang\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet graduate student Yuxiang Wang"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yuxiang Wang first became interested in science during a middle school biology course when he found himself intrigued with biological processes. Recently, his vaccine research has refocused from tick-borne diseases to the COVID-19 virus, and for the first time in his career he feels a sense of urgency and importance to work that could contribute to a vaccine. In the future, he hopes to find a university position that includes teaching and research. Here\u2019s what he had to say about his experiences at UConn.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why did you decide to go to graduate school?<\/strong><\/p>\n

My long-term goal has always been establishing my own lab, doing my own research and mentoring my own students. Therefore, I had also realized a long time ago that, in order to be capable of doing scientific research, I need to seek professional training. Graduate school was the exact choice for me.<\/p>\n

Who is your advisor? What is your field of research?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dr. Paulo Verardi<\/a>. My field is virology and our lab\u2019s main focus is development of vaccine candidates for different infectious diseases.<\/p>\n

Name one aspect of your work that you like.<\/strong><\/p>\n

What interests me the most is the opportunity to test and prove my hypothesis through experiments. It doesn\u2019t always have to be a big hypothesis for an entire project. Very frequently it could just be a novel idea that I can quickly test with a small experiment. It\u2019s the accumulation of these small successes that keeps me looking forward to the next step of the experiment and the next stage of the project.<\/p>\n

In your opinion, what is your greatest accomplishment so far?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was able to make approximately ten vaccine candidates for five different vector-borne infectious diseases within a summer. We haven\u2019t been able to test them in animal models yet due to lack of funding, but at least I was able to generate them in a fairly short period of time.<\/p>\n

When do you expect to get your degree? What then?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was expecting to get my Ph.D. in the summer of 2021. However, due to COVID-19 and the change of my project to this topic, there might be months of delay before I complete my Ph.D. program. The next step for me is\u00a0to do a post-doc where I can really train my ability to independently do research and to prepare myself for becoming a scientist in the following few years. After that, I\u2019d like to go back to China and establish my own lab there.<\/p>\n

Is there anything else you would like us to know about you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to talk about how I live and enjoy my life outside lab\/work. Unlike many who may think doing something specially planned or significantly different is the only way to enjoy your life, such as taking a trip to an island, moving to another city, etc., I enjoy and appreciate each and every single day of my life. Seeing the morning sun shine through the window, boiling a pot of broccoli with water vapor rising, greeting a colleague at work, listening to the rainstorm growling outside, going to a friend\u2019s place for dinner, etc. These repetitive details don\u2019t bore me, but instead, remind me of how lucky we are. Simply put, I embrace my life and never escape from it.<\/p>\n

This interview original appeared on Naturally@UConn.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yuxiang Wang first became interested in science during a middle school biology course when he found himself intrigued with biological processes. Recently, his vaccine research has refocused from tick-borne diseases to the COVID-19 virus, and for the first time in his career he feels a sense of urgency and importance to work that could contribute […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":162838,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2224],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1871],"class_list":["post-162392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cahnr"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-04 05:11:17","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/162838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162392"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=162392"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=162392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}