Doctoral candidate 8 - Anqi Lyu - Kungliga Tekniska Hoegskolan, Stockholm, Sweden

Supervisor: Lynn Butler, KTH;

co-supervisor: Peter McCourt, UiT

Meet our doctoral candidate #8 , Anqi Lyu from China!

Tell us about yourself, who are you? (and how do you like to spend your time?)

Hello everyone, my name Anqi, a name of Chinese origin that can be interpreted or translated as ‘angel’ in the English language. Interestingly, angels are not known in our language and culture! I come from the south-eastern part of China, the Fujian province, and therefore speak Taiwanese which is totally different from Mandarin. However, these languages have the same characters.

I play the violin in my free time and generally spend a lot of time making music. I also like to do sport to balance things out, I swim or practise yoga and I also enjoy reading, mostly novels, and trying to learn new languages.

In the age of AI, however, this is a little more difficult, as I believe that AI can learn languages faster and more efficiently. Nevertheless, I still enjoy getting to know new cultures. I've also learnt a little German! I think that's quite useful for Europe, for example in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and even a bit in Sweden.

What is your educational background and what have been up until now?

I completed my Bachelor's degree in Biomedical Engineering at the College of Automatics in the Jiangsu province, I really enjoyed my time there especially due to the variety of dishes and food!

I have a masters degree in Medical Bioninformatics from the University of Verona in Italy, the city of the story of forbidden love between Romeo and Juliet.

I have also spent two years in Hong Kong where I was part of the faculty of medicine and was awarded a 6-month scholarship in Saudi Arabia as part of the so called “Visiting Student Research Program” at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. Unfortunately, I was unable to travel to the country due to the Covid restrictions.

Why did you decide to join ImAge-D?

Initially, my goal was to find a research position in Europe, especially as I have focused my whole life on research. Also, there are many countries in Europe that I have not yet seen but would like to travel to.

The ImAgE-D project fits very well with my educational background and I want to further develop my bioinformatics skills.

And most importantly - apart from the interdisciplinarity and my background - I get the chance to build and expand a network in Europe.

What are your expectations regarding your work in the ImAge-D project?

With my passion for biomedical research I am especially looking forward towards improving and enhancing the human health. In my point of view we are able to tame a tiger, or tame animals. We are able to conquer the air with planes but we did not yet manage to make people “immortal”.

For me it’s a great opportunity to apply my computational skills to enhancing the life expectation both of humans and animals.

Could you share a fun fact with me?

Everytime I go the forest I can hear the birds singing and chirping. And the birds have a different tone depending on if they are happy or maybe unhappy.

And I also noticed that different birds sind different songs. So I have been following a ornithological channel on Youtube in the hope to identify some of the voices.

Thank you very much Anqi for this exciting interview! Welcome on board of the ImAgE-D project and we wish you all the best for the upcoming years!