Biographical sketch: Yi Wang

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Yi Wang was born in a beautiful city in the southeastern China. Her home was surrounded by mountains with picturesque lake scenery. Growing in such surroundings, she developed her taste and appreciation of nature.

However, shortly after she entered high school, economy in this city bloomed abruptly at the cost of the clean environment. She grieved for destruction of the environment. And a strong desire——to become a researcher to fix the environmental problem, sprouted in her heart. During her high school, she not only studied diligently, but also read a bunch of books concerning nature, including Sand County Almanac, Walden, and Silent Spring. Thanks to her endeavor, she was accepted by one of the most prestigious universities in China——Xiamen University, which is not only regarded as the most beautiful university in China, but also provides one of the best undergraduate environmental science programs.

As a freshman, she took the initiative to participate in student union and activities to build her leadership; while on the other hand, she contacted her teachers to strive for more opportunities in the lab. Touched by her persistence and efforts, several professors offered research intern positions to her. The first and longest project was Dr. Yihui Zhang’s research on the spreading and invading of Spartina alterniflora in the mangrove forests of Zhangjiang Estuary. This research focused on the impact of a native grazer (a kind of mice) on inhibiting invasion of exotic Spartina alterniflora into mangrove forests in Zhangjiangkou Mangrove National Nature Reserve. When conducting the field study, she suffered a lot by walking in thick mud with heavy instruments, sleeping on dirty floor in local village for several days. Though hard and time-consuming, she did it.

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Yi Wang (in left) was measuring the seedling of Spartina alterniflora

During the period, she has highly improved her hands-on ability, experiment skills, and team work. Meanwhile, when discussing experiment progress and thesis writing with the professor, she was appraised for her excellent research potential and high efficiency of literature reading. In Nov. 2013, her efforts paid off and she was invited to attend the Sixth National Seminar on Mangrove Forest with other team members for their abstract had been adopted. Through this seminar, her passion of devoting to the research was completely ignited. Thus she look forward to involving in more researches and experiments.

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Yi Wang was working in the archaeology lab in the University of Calgary

In 2014, she got a chance offered by Mitacs Canada to work as a research intern in Dr. Julio Mercader’s lab in University of Calgary on the research titled Phytoliths as palaeobotanical indicators of climate change and context for human evolution. This research intermingled with the knowledge of archaeology, biology, chemistry and environment. She had a tough beginning because she was hardly familiar with terminologies in archaeology and barely understood the morphological descriptions of Phytoliths, but to read hard and memorize the experiment procedures. That was really a challenge for her, but she enjoyed challenging herself. Under professors’ in-person guidance, she immersed herself in a large number of literature. Soon after, she had a certain understanding of Phytoliths and was able to discuss the on-going experiment with the professor. With specific schedule, hard work, strong experiment skills, she successfully completed her experiments in advance.

Due to her excellent academic performance, she gained a fully spo

Yi Wang with Dr. Magnus Larson in Lund University

nsorship by China Scholarship Council to study in Lund University in Sweden for five month in 2015. During her exchange study, She set up a good friendship with top researchers in Lund University and learnt advanced knowledge on surface water modelling. She even completed a bachelor-degree thesis on fate and transport models of Polychlorinated Biphenyl based on a synthesis literature review under the supervision of Dr. Linus Zhang and Dr. Magnus Larson.

Considering her previous research experiences on ecology, biology and hydrology, the interactions between ecological and hydrological processes are more appealing to her than just pure hydrology, and thus, she decided to take ecohydrology as her master-degree project with Dr. Adam Wei’s group at University of British Columbia (Okanagan campus) to study forest carbon and water coupling.

Yi was measuring leaf photpsynthesis by LICOR 6400.

The field work was not easier than Dr. Zhang’s project, not only in terms of the workload, but also the availability of people and equipment. With specific goals, hard work, and the generous help from everyone in the group, she successfully completed the experiments throughout the two-year period. In brief, her master-degree research provided her with precious opportunities of going through the entire research process from design to publication.

After graduated from UBCO, She got an wonderful research opportunity ecohydrological processes of the Canadian Rockies under the supervision of Dr. Rich Petrone from the University of Waterloo. She wishes to make her contribution to fighting with water crisis under global climate change and maintain our planet as beautiful as before 🙂