New start at Midwestern University

2025/07/14

I am super excited to join Midwestern University (MWU) as an Assistant Professor of Anatomy! My new role at MWU (Downers Grove campus, Illinois) will focus on teaching human anatomy at multiple degree programs, continuing my research in paleontology and paleoecology, and mentoring students. There will be some new challenges, but I am excited about the opportunity to extend my research collaborations to the greater Chicago area. I am sad to leave the AMNH family, and I'm grateful for the Richard Gilder Graduate School and the Division of Anthropology for the exceptional research experience during my postdoc. More to come!

Research visit at Harvard University

2025/04/11 

I was able to spend another week doing lab work at the terrestrial plant wax biomarkers in the Uno and Pearson lab at Harvard University. It is a continuing quest for us to characterize the vegetation composition of the ~6 Million year old site of Lemudong'o (Kenya), to shed light on early hominin evolution. Although things didn't go as smoothly as we planned (lab work often works out that way), we generated our first data point of plant wax isotopes from Lemudong'o! Super exciting! And stay tuned for more updates in the next few months. Apart from that, a few of us tooth nerds (including Daniel Green and Margot Louail in the photo) had a great meeting together discussing our research plans. A lot of things to think about. A big thank you to Kevin Uno for hosting me in Cambridge again. And thank you to the Uno lab members (Frank Farley, Jon Smolen, Kayla Worthey, Ruth Tweedy, and Susie Carter) for their tremendous help and support.

Great AABA conference in Baltimore

2025/03/15 

The Southern Kenyan Rift Project had great exposure at the annual meeting of the American Association of Biological Anthropologists in Baltimore! We presented some of our latest results on the dietary niches of large herbivores found in the site complex known as the Lemudong'o Formation, dated to 6.2-6.0 million years ago. The coolest part of the results was that that fossil hippos and pigs had grassy diets in open environments, showing high degrees of dietary flexibility. This is in contrast to most other animals that were more or less ecological specialists. This was the second time we presented preliminary results of our recently funded (NSF and the Leakey Foundation) project. And I had the opportunity to do a short presentation with the Leakey Foundation on how our results can help answer questions about human evolution! It is always great to have support from the Leakey Foundation!

New article published in Nature Communications Biology

2025/02/21 

Our article on Strontium isotope mapping of elephant enamel is published in Communications Biology! We showed how Sr is recorded in elephant teeth and how we use such records to help reconstruct megaherbivore migrations. The workflow that we demonstrated can be applied to studies of paleobiology, to answer how megaherbivores migrated in the past. It can also be applied to studies of modern conservation and forensics, to trace the origins of illegal ivory trade and other forms of wildlife trafficking. This project was possible thanks to the contributions of Katya Podkovyroff, who did an amazing job with her thesis project at the University of Utah, and the wonderful support from Kevin Uno, Gabe Bowen, Diego Fernandez, and Thure Cerling. We also wrote a blog post (link here) to capture some behind-the-scenes stories of this project. Thank you to the caretakers at the Hogle Zoo, and Misha for her loyal participation!

Grant application funded by the Leakey Foundation 

2025/01/28 

I'm thrilled to announce that I'm one of the Fall 2024 Leakey Research Grant Recipients. This is my second time being funded by the Leakey Foundation (link to the announcement on the Leakey Foundation website). And thanks to their generous support, my PhD research at Stony Brook University was successful.

A huge thank you to my amazing mentors and collaborators Ashley Hammond, Erin DiMaggio, Kevin Uno, Thure Cerling, Kyalo Manthi, Rahab Kinyanjui, and Greg Henkes, who have supported me along the way. Can't wait to share more research updates from our field site in Lemudong'o, Kenya, and from the lab.

Lang Family Night in the Hall of Ocean Life, AMNH 

2024/11/28 

It was great talking about science, paleoanthropology and stable isotopes at the Lang Family Night event in the Hall of Ocean Life at the American Museum of Natural History. I spoke about how we as paleo-detectives use stable isotopes as the main tool to solve long-standing cases in the past. We had over 200 participants in the audience, and many students and their parents came by and asked me a wide range of questions. I was particularly surprised by a question from a 9-year-old, asking about human evolution into the future with influence from Artificial Intelligence! Also, what’s not to like having the iconic Blue Whale in the audience! Big thank yous to Abbey Novia, Arianna McMillon, Maria Strangas and others, for the invitation, and all their work behind the scenes. 

Organic Geochemistry at Harvard (Uno and Pearson lab)

2024/11/15 

It has been an awesome week learning the organic geochemistry of analyzing terrestrial plant wax biomarkers in the Uno and Pearson lab at Harvard University. It is humbling to learn all the steps and the amount of effort and time involved in producing a set of plant wax biomarker data! The photo was taken by Dr. Kevin Uno in the lab, with Dr. Jon Smolen and the first batch of 14 sedimentary samples from our NSF funded SKRP project. We hope to characterize the vegetation composition of the two fossiliferous localities at the ~6 Million year old site, to shed light on early hominin evolution. Fingers crossed that we get solid results! A big thank you to my long-term collaborator Kevin Uno for hosting me in Cambridge with his busy schedule. And thank you to the Uno lab members (Frank Farley, Jon Smolen, Brice Mitsunaga, Ruth Tweedy, and others) for their guidance and help.

Excellent session at SVP 2024

2024/10/30 

We had an excellent session discussing the morphology, evolution, and ecology of elephants and relatives at the 84th Annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, in Minneapolis, MN. I presented our work on Sr isotopes measured in enamel and our evaluation on the fidelity of the data as archives of animal migration histories. A big thank you to the SVP program committee for putting together a diverse and exciting session. It was truly thought provoking, and we had a long and inspiring discussion after the presentations. A big thank you to my co-moderator Dr. Ethan Shirley and all the other speakers for their help delivering this successful session. I hope this session paints a clearer picture than the one of me at the podium!

New article in JGR Biogeosciences

2024/09/12 

Our article on estimating the contribution of submerged aquatic plants to sedimentary organic matter is out in the journal JGR Biogeosciences. The study looks into how we may use compound specific organic geochemistry and isotopes to monitor the health of aquatic habitats due to human activities, or to answer questions about environmental change over geological time. It uses a Bayesian modeling framework that I previously developed to produce estimates of organic matter input from multiple potential sources. We found that submerged aquatic plants are the major source of organic matter at Futou Lake, a shallow freshwater lake of the Yangze floodplain that is at risk of anthropogenic impacts. Huge congratulations to my co-authors Linghan Zeng et al. at the China University of Geosciences, Wuhan. 

The article: JGR-Biogeosciences.

NSF funded! 3 more years at Lemudong'o, southern Kenya

2024/08/22 

It is such a delight to share the good news that our NSF proposal has been funded! Huge congratulations to my collaborators and co-PIs for the success and the exciting new work planned in the next three years. We will be working in the southern Kenyan Rift near the town of Narok, at the site of Lemudong'o, which is part of the ancestral land of the Maasai people. Through this grant, we hope to conduct intensive paleontological recovery, paleoenvironmental reconstruction, and refinement and expansion of the regional geological framework for understanding hominin origins. 

Scientific discoveries aside, we hope to bring different perspectives of the local Maasai culture, including landmark names, indigenous knowledge, and folktales to a broader audience. We also hope to disseminate the significance of the site and their ancestral homeland to the field of African paleontology and paleoanthropology to the local Maasai people.  We are planning to bring graduate and undergraduate student training opportunities to Narok through collaborations with the National Museums of Kenya. Stay tuned for more exciting field discoveries to come!

Link to the NSF award page

The Biological Anthropology Lab is at the EAAPP meetings!

2024/08/01 

The 9th biannual meeting of the Eastern African Association of Paleontology and Paleoanthropology is off to a great start in Addis Ababa. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the Australopithecus afarensis specimen "Lucy". Addis has also changed dramatically since the first time I attended the conference in 2011! This year, the conference was held at the newly completed Adwa Museum, with really impressive displays and facilities. Huge congratulations to the organizing committee for the tremendous work behind the scenes!

The BAL lab at AMNH is well represented by three lab members (see photo) and two presentations (one oral, one poster). It was really great to catch up with old friends and meeting new colleagues. And I was really happy to see the tremendous growth in the participants of the EAAPP meetings, especially friends, students, interns, and fossil preparators from African countries and institutions. A very successful conference overall!

Tufted puffins spotted!

2024/07/06 

We spotted a small group of tufted puffins off the famous Face Rock off Bandon, Oregon. they are arctic pelagic residents that rarely visit the southern latitudes. The Face Rock is one of the most southern places to see these beautify birds on the Pacific Coast due to the constant supply of cold waters of the California Current. With the help of local birders, we were able to find four tufted puffins on the Face Rock (blue arrows). The Face Rock is so far away from the shoreline that they look super tiny even through a powerful telescope. But their bright orange beaks and feet are clearly visible. They seem to be happy hanging out together, and away from the much more common and gregarious common murres in the upper section of the image. The image insert on the lower left shows a closeup photo of the bird from the internet as a reference (thanks to eBird).

New article in Water Resources Research

2024/06/01 

Our article on the stable isotope values of water samples collected around Lake Turkana is out in the journal Water Resources Research. Apart from offering new and much needed data from this remote location for recent years, we also evaluate important assumptions about the evaporation process of the lake water using a modeling approach. We found that the relative humidity of the air above the lake surface is probably higher than expected, suggesting a heavy influence of water vapor evaporated from the lake. I am proud to have participated in this project during my graduate school years. It was fun to explain to the students why I ran into the rain with sampling vials in the middle of the night. Huge congratulations to Ph.D. candidate Mae Saslaw on her first peer-reviewed paper and kudos to her for leading the charge. This project would not have been possible without the help and support from other co-authors, and especially Greg Henkes who first proposed the project idea. The support from the Turkana Basin Institute (via a graduate fellowship) and the IDPAS program at Stony Brook also played a vital role. Lastly, we thank William Woto and Hilary Sale of the Turkana Basin Institute who did the hard work collecting some of the water samples for us! 

The article: Water Resources Research Software: Zenodo

Humpback whales off the coast of Maine

2024/05/25 

We were extremely fortunate to see three Humpback whales on a whale watching tour off the coast of Maine. The whales were kind enough to "show off" a few tricks just some 20 meters away from our boat. One whale repetitively lifted its tail out of the water and forcefully slapped it onto the surface of the water, resulting in loud slaps that we can hear clearly from the boat. The slapping lasted several minutes in a few bouts. The whale also spined its body in between bouts and did the tail slapping belly-up. We could also see its long and white pectoral fins when it spined its body. Soon after this, we saw another whale that also did the tail slapping some distance away. Perhaps some communication was going one between the two? Judging by the excitement from the boat crew, I guessed it was a really successful tour for the first day of the season!

Great session at the EGU24 General Assembly, Vienna

2024/04/21 

European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly was a blast! This was my first time serving as a convener of a session, but it was great to invite friends and colleagues from all over the world and present their cutting-edge work. Many thanks to the chair of the Inter- and Transdisciplinary Sessions, and our excellent co-conveners, especially Thushara Venugopal, Daniel Cleary, and Jiaoyang Ruan for making this session possible and fun! Looking forward to our next scientific adventures!

Abstracts in our session:  Forensics of Climate and Life My presentation

New article in Current Zoology

2024/04/04 

Our article on the the seasonal dietary variations of wild suids in Africa has been published in Current Zoology. We explored the dietary habits of two wild pigs - bushpigs/red river hogs (Potamochoerus) and warthogs (Phacochoerus), using pig teeth collected from three regions across Africa. Intra-tooth stable isotope analysis revealed dietary niche partitioning between the two pigs: Bushpigs/red river hogs primarily consume C3 plants, whereas warthogs favor C4 grasses. Their dietary niche spacing differ depending on seasonal resource availability. During the rainy seasons with food abundance, their diets exhibited greater similarity, while during the dry seasons with food scarcity, their diets exhibited greater differentiation. This paper is part of my dissertation, and I'm really grateful for the help and support from my advisors and collaborators. Part of the material used in this study was provided by the mammalogy division of the AMNH! It was a fun project!

The article:  Current Zoology

New article in Nature

2024/03/20 

Our article on the adaptive foraging behavior of late-Pleistocene modern humans through the Toba volcano supereruption has been published in Nature! It has been a great honor to participate in this study! I'm really proud of how the isotopes of the ostrich eggshell (OES) stable isotopes matched up with both the Younger Toba Tuff (YTT) and the substantial shift in foraging behavior (see figure)! The resilience of modern humans to climatic adversity has deep roots. The location of the site (western Ethiopia) may also explain historic population flows and structures within eastern Africa and perhaps into Asia. Kudos to Professor John Kappelman who lead the charge and all co-authors who contributed to this truly multidisciplinary project!

The article:  Nature Download PDF  Download supplement

New article in Quaternary Science Reviews

2024/02/20 

It has been a long time in the making! Back in 2012, I joined the Koobi Fora Research Project team and helped recover an almost complete lower dentition of Homo habilis, and very fragmentary postcranial elements ~ 5m away. It took multiple field trips to the hominin site and sophisticated analyses including Nano-CT,  X-ray diffraction, etc., to finally conclude that they most likely belong to the same individual! I am very proud to have participated in this multi-disciplinary project that involves one of the few Homo habilis skeletons out there! Kudos to Ted Present who lead the charge and all co-authors who contributed to this wonderful project!

The article:  Quaternary Science Reviews Download PDF  Download supplement

Outreach with the Buckley School of New York City

2024/02/9 

It was a great pleasure hosting talented 10th graders from the Buckley School of New York City in the AMNH Hall of Human Origins. The students learned from me and my colleagues about the magnificent human journey, from our roots among apes, our extinct cousins and how they lived, to the material culture that our ancestors left behind. The students were very excited about learning from features of skulls and teeth first hand, hence the group photo. I really enjoyed the Q&A during the outreach session, some being quite philosophical! What a good way to celebrate our evolutionary journey right before the Lunar New Year and Darwin's birthday!

Prehistoric residents of the Channel Islands

2024/01/18 

Our trip to the Channel Islands National Park was a great success! Among the usual suspects of the Pacific coast, including various water birds (Western grebe and Black oystercatcher being featured) and the Sea otter (also featured), we saw one of the endemic species of the Channel Islands: the Island fox. They got stranded on the Islands with no predators and went through some amazing evolutionary process called island dwarfism. As a result, they became so tamed and completely defenseless against large predators and were once endangered due to the introduction of the Golden eagle. Fortunately, the eagles got airlifted by conservationists to the other side of the Sierra Nevada, and the fox population is bouncing back. What was even more humbling to learn was that there were pygmy mammoths on the Islands during the Last Glacial Maximum, which were only ~30% of the size of its closest relative, the Columbian mammoth!

Join us in the REU program this summer at AMNH!

2023/12/11

It is that time of the year! Still planning your research this summer? Check out our call for REU participants at the American Museum of Natural History via this link. Enjoy the vibrant social life with your biology peers in the heart of New York City!

Oh, and the first project listed is with me, on dental wear and development in African pigs! You will be comparing dental developmental schedule and dental wear in warthogs, bushpigs, and giant forest hogs that are native to Africa. You will receive training in dental anatomy and development in mammals, photographic methods for data collection, 2-D dental morphological data collection using the FIJI software, coding for statistical analyses and data visualization in R. This study will help us understand the role of dental use, dental wear, dental development, and evolution of specialized dentition, and how they are related to our own dental problems. 

Join us at the EGU General Assembly in Vienna!

2023/11/13

Abstract submission for the European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly 2024 is open! If you use forensic approaches (aDNA, Proteomics, Geochemistry, etc.) to study/model biology, ecology and climate of the past, present and the future, consider submitting an abstract to our session ITS2.2/GB1.15 via this link, or scan the QR code from the flyer on the left. Deadline is January 10th. Hope to see you in Vienna!

New paper published in Methods in Ecology and Evolution

2023/10/03

Our paper on Sr isotope turnover in elephants and the modeling framework that can help reconstruct Sr intake ratios from tusk dentine measurements is published! The project started more than 10 years ago with Kevin Uno and Thure Cerling's work on Misha, a zoo elephant that was moved from CA to Salt Lake City's Hogle Zoo! The move turned out to be a perfect experiment for the questions that we are interested in: how fast strontium is metabolized in the body of a large animal. We also developed an open-source algorithm that uses the turnover features to reconstruct Sr intake history from tusk data. It can help paleontologists and conservation biologists to reconstruct migration from animal remains. The paper, the supplementary information, and all model code can be found via this link. 

Samples from the field all packed up!

2023/09/15

After about a month of tallying and organizing, we managed to pack up all the geological samples of the 2023 field season for shipment! They include tuffs for radiometric dating, paleosols and sedimentary rock samples for biomarker and phytoliths analyses, and enamel samples for stable isotope analysis. And they come in 18 boxes! It is such an accomplishment of the entire team working so hard in the field and collecting these invaluable samples that will help to inform paleoenvironmental conditions of the distant past in eastern Africa. Special thanks to our student intern Justus who contributed expert packing skills in handling the boxes and samples.

Field work in Narok, Kenya

2023/08/16

We just came back from a short field season in Narok Kenya! We did so much work this year, mostly trying to understand the geological contexts of the fossiliferous localities and sampling the sedimentary sequences for biomarkers, phytoliths, and paleosol carbonates for paleoenvironmental reconstructions. Although there was quite a bit of digging in the dirt for us city people, it has been a lot of fun working with the field crew and my co-PIs (Ashley Hammond, Erin DiMaggio, Stan Ambrose, Rahab Kinyanjui, and Kyalo Manthi). While we are still trying to kick some dust off our boots, the museum work has already started. I will spend about a month in Nairobi working on the paleontological collections there, sampling tooth enamel for carbon and oxygen stable isotopes. More to come!

New start at the American Museum of Natural History

2023/07/14

I am super excited to start a new postdoc position at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH)! I am super honored and grateful to have been awarded the Kalbfleisch Postdoctoral Fellowship of the Richard Gilder Graduate School, which comes with a generous amount of research funding in addition to my stipend.  My main project at the AMNH will focus on a multi-proxy environmental reconstruction of a late Miocene site in the eastern African Rift, to inform the habitats of the last common ancestor of apes and humans.  We are busy preparing for a short field season this summer and will be heading to the field site in Kenya soon. Stay tuned for more exciting updates!

Greater Sage Grouse spotted!

2023/06/04

The Greater Sage Grouse has been on our species list of interest for a long time. It turns out that one of the best places to see them is not far from Salt Lake City! After some careful research and planning, we went out to the Henefer lek where the grouse are known to aggregate and perform their iconic dances. We got up super early and arrived a few minutes before sunrise. And there they were! About 30 individuals, mostly females gently pacing and foraging around while a handful of males were doing their courtship routines. But just about 20 minutes later, as the first rays of the sun hit the ground, they all flew away and disappeared into the sagebrush. It was an amazing sighting and we felt super fortunate to be able to see their fascinating performance on this early-summer morning.

NEON site visit

2023/05/08

It was a cool sunny day when we did an organized tour of the NEON (National Ecological Observatory Network) Onaqui site near Tooele, UT. We learned about the history of the site, the instruments that have been installed and operational, and sampling protocols including those of plants, insects, small mammals and parasites. Really exciting data being collected on a regular bases! Thank you to Amy (far left) and Chris (second right) for allowing us a close peek into the facility and providing us with all the details about the site. And thank you Gabe (far right) for organizing the visit and being the dedicated driver!

Congratulations, Katya!

2023/04/26

So incredibly proud of our undergraduate student Katya Podkovyroff who has been working on her senior thesis project with Professor Diego P Fernandez and I. She has done an amazing amount of work in the lab with strontium chemistry on a wide range of materials from elephant feed, dental materials, and water samples, which advances our understanding of strontium turnover in large herbivores such as elephants. Oh, did I mention that she also received the prestigious NSF GRFP for her graduate workthat she will start in her dream program at the Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the University of Oregon this Fall? Such amazing accomplishments! Congratulations, Katya! We are so proud to see you shine and look forward to hear more about your success soon!

Snow capped Bryce Canyon

2023/03/12

The Bryce Canyon National Park is particularly beautiful in winter for the contrast between the white snow cap and the red banded sandstones. The vertical structures are called hoodoos, which are formed by frost weathering and stream erosion of the sedimentary rocks.  When we visited this time around, the canyon was covered by dense fog and we couldn't see much in the beginning. Luckily, the fog receded in the end, and the full color spectrum of the canyon was revealed. Quite different from most other national parks in Utah!

The "Firefall" of Yosemite National Park

2023/02/18

For a couple of weeks in February every year, the Horsetail fall of Yosemite National Park, as being lit by the setting sun, may appear to be a fiery ribbon against the dark El Capitan. This year, we joined a huge crowd of people (thousand!) at the viewing site hoping to witness this spectacle. Many people set up cameras and tripods hoping to capture the scene. Others brought food and drinks while sitting in their chairs and chattering with family and friends. We had a clear weather in the beginning, but an impromptu and unyielding piece of cloud blocked the sun as it got close to sunset time. The waterfall looked so dull for a good while that some people even packed up and left! It was not until 5 min before sunset when it finally lit up! It was probably not the most spectacular "Firefall" scene out there, but we feel lucky being able to see it! Totally worth the long wait!

Happy Lunar New Year: year of the rabbit (or cat)!

2023/01/22

Lunar New Year is a public holiday in California for the first time this year! Yay! But I also learned from NPR that in Vietnam, year of the rabbit can also be year of the cat! It turns out that the zodiac animals seem to have evolved through oral traditions and no one knows when this happened!

Here is the article for reference: https://www.npr.org/2023/01/21/1150216367/lunar-new-year-vietnam-year-of-cat

Seeing the critically endangered California Condor

2022/12/25

On our second visit to the Pinnacles National Park, CA, we were thrilled to see one of the most majestic raptors of North America, the California Condor. They are so critically endangered that a special artificial breeding program has been carried out to boost its dwindling population (only 27 wild individuals in 1987). We saw at least 12 during our visit (with numbered tags on their wings, #31 in the photo), both soaring high in the sky and roosting on the rocky pinnacles. What a good way to celebrate the end of an eventful year!

Fun fact: California Condors are the largest known bird to reproduce asexually (see publication here). 

Interactive online poster available for AGU 2022

2022/11/30

This year at AGU, we are thrilled to present a case study of our multi-source mixing model n-alkanes, and its application in estimating precipitation δ2H. This work is published in the EGU journal Climate of the Past, with model code implemented in R and JAGS (Zenodo).  For more information, see the news featured below.

Check out the AGU interactive poster here, or the PDF version if you are interested! 

New article published in Climate of the Past

2022/09/30

Gabe Bowen and I developed a Bayesian model framework that integrates multi-proxy, multi-chain biomarker data for more informative paleovegetation and paleoclimate reconstructions.  We showed that the model can resolve complex mixing scenarios of multiple vegetation sources, compared to traditional two-end mixing model/proxy. 

Check out the open-access article here: https://cp.copernicus.org/articles/18/2181/2022/.

The model code is open-source and available on GitHub; Archived code ver. 1.0.5 (Bok choy) on Zenodo. 

New article published in Archives of Oral Biology

2022/08/24

Why do certain parts of our teeth break more frequently? It turns out that not all parts of our teeth are equally strong! We investigated the internal enamel structures that serve as damage control agents in our teeth. They are known as Hunter-Schreger Bands, which strengthen the enamel layer by stopping crack propagation. We found that the 'functional' side is consistently stronger than the 'guiding' side of the molar crown, and that upper molars are also stronger than lower molars, which explain the intriguing fracture frequencies in dental surveys.

Article: Yang, Bharatiya and Grine, 2022, Hunter-Schreger Band configuration in modern human molars reveals more decussation in the lateral enamel of 'functional' cusps than 'guiding' cusps. Check it out via the link here, or the PDF version if you are interested! 

Special shoutout to my previous undergraduate advisee Maya Bharatiya for her incredible work at Stony Brook University. Extremely proud that she is now continuing her graduate research on teeth with Professor Tanya Smith at Griffith University in Australia! 

Here's a quote from Maya about her current research: "Moving all the way to Australia alone for the first time was a daunting and nerve-wracking experience, but I can truly say that it has been one of the greatest leaps I’ve taken for myself and my career. I’ve learned so much about teeth, academia, and research and I’m so excited to see where my PhD takes me next. " More about her research in Professor Tanya Smith's lab here: http://www.drtanyamsmith.com/dental-hard-tissue-lab/ 

Well done SPATIAL 2022!

2022/08/14

It was an intensive two-week stretch for everyone but we powered through with great enthusiasm and friendship! This was the third time I was involved in the SPATIAL short course, but every single time, I learned so much from our incredible instructors and students. The lectures were inspiring, and I had so much fun working with the students on their projects. Some project ideas might seem a bit ambitious in the beginning, but we all pushed through towards the end. Big thank you to Gabe, Laurie, Ja'net, Sagarika, and all the instructors for the hard work behind the scenes to make this a wonderful experience! It was such a privilege to get to know some of the smartest and funniest people out there. Let's keep the ball rolling and I look forward to working with some of you in the future. The color of the T-shirt just keeps improving!

Wildlife in the Sierra Nevada Mountains

2022/07/05

The Sierra Nevada Mountains is home to the endangered population of Giant Sequoias. Standing under a living organism that started as a seedling in the Roman times and ends up at a towering height of >80 meters was an extremely humbling experience. 80 meters was just a number over my head, but seeing one fallen sequoia next to the trail really hammered it in. It took me a minute to walk from one end of the tree to the other! So it is quite saddening to learn that those giants are disappearing due to wildfires are burning hotter than ever. We also ran into four black bears within 5 minutes of hiking in Kings Canyon NP! I was quite surprised by how habituated they are and how close they can get to people... But in the end, a safety distance was respected by both parties! 

Feel free to hop over to the Photo Gallery for more.

Wildlife in Yellowstone National Park

2022/05/28

I have wanted to go to Yellowstone National Park for a long time, and the opportunity came just before Memorial Day! It was my first road trip after the pandemic began and what I believe before the new wave of summer infections. We visited the Grand Teton NP to see the snowy peaks, and Yellowstone to see the geysers, canyons, and most importantly, the wildlife. A large area within Yellowstone was still covered by snow and closed to the public, but visitors like us still swarmed the areas around the main attractions. Nevertheless, it was a super successful trip! We enjoyed seeing the birds there, including the ruffed grouse, mountain bluebird, eared grebe, Barrow's goldeneye, Cassin's finch, sandhill crane, yellow-headed blackbird, etc. We also saw some large mammals, including a fox, some pronghorn, elk, moose, bison, black bears, and wolves.

Feel free to hop over to the Photo Gallery for more.

Dissertation chapter published in Paleobiology

2022/04/21

Why the long teeth?! We investigated the evolutionary trends of functional occlusal traits in 3 Plio-Pleistocene African suid genera. The African suids are interesting because they all evolved to have longer and taller third molars through time, which is considered a common adaptation to grass-feeding. But we found that some functional occlusal traits evolved differently!

Check it out via the Open Access portal, or the PDF version if you are interested! 

Special shoutout to my undergraduate advisee Asli Pisano for her incredible work at Stony Brook University, all other collaborators, and the Turkana Basin Institute for their support.

Two doses of Sinovac-CoronaVac

2022/04/15

As a prerequisite for my travel back to China, I did a COVID antibody test and found that my antibody count was low 4 months after my booster shot. I was able to get two doses of Sinovac-CoronaVac in China. Here are a couple of observations that I had compared to the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. 1, The CoronaVac vaccine uses inactivated whole virus of the wild type (original) SARS-CoV-2 strain, at the dosage of 2 mg. 2, I experienced minimal immunal response reactions in both doses, compared to those of the second and the booster doses of mRNA vaccines. The reported evidence that the Sinovac-CoronaVac vaccine has lower efficacies against both symptomatic infections and severe illnesses compared to mRNA vaccines seems to be consistent with how the immune system responds to the different vaccines: the stronger the vaccine-induced reactions are, the better protection the it seems to provide. There are a lot of discussions on promoting mRNA vaccines as a booster in China for better COVID protection. I hope the consensus can be turned into actions soon.

Here is a translation of the image shown:

COVID vaccination record Refresh

Vaccination completed

Second dose

Vaccine type: Inactivated whole virus vaccine

Vaccine provider: Sinovac Beijing (CoronaVac)

Vaccination date: 2022/04/15

Interactive online poster available for AGU 2021

2021/12/03

We are thrilled to share our latest efforts on quantitative interpretations of plant wax n-alkane records using a multi-source mixing model leveraged by both chain length distribution and δ13C of n-alkanes in the sedimentary archives. This work is implemented via Bayesian model inversion and the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) process. It offers multi-source mixing solutions and more informed interpretations of data. The flexible model framework allows the incorporation of additional proxies in the future.

Check out the AGU interactive poster here, or the PDF version if you are interested! 

SPATIAL 2021 was a great success!

2021/08/13

After a one-year hiatus, the participants of the SPATIAL short course (2021) gathered at the FASB again! The lectures were all super inspiring, and what I loved the most were the enthusiasm and companionship throughout! What a nice change to have amid all the COVID-related masking and distancing rules! Thank you to Gabe, Alexis, Sagarika, all the instructors and our wonderful students to make it happen and to make it fun! Looking forward to more adventures in the coming years! Did I say that the color of the T-shirt is amazing?

Humpback whales near Monterey Bay, CA

2021/07/04

As part of my July 4th celebrations, I went for a whale watching trip with the Monterey Bay Whale Watch. Despite the gloomy weather and chilling winds, we saw several humpback whales, including calves that put up quite a display with splashes of water. We also saw Casper, an all-white dolphin (natural albinism) who is considered a local celebrity! We also saw seals, sea lions, and sea otters, adding to the growing list of marine mammals that I have seen. Super exciting!

Great presentations at IsoEco 2021

2021/05/23

IsoEco 2021 was the first virtual meeting I participated in since the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. It was an absolute blast to see so many great oral and poster presentations. So many stimulating studies! The SPATIAL lab also has great presence at the conference via two workshops.  One is about the recent development of the stable isotope data repository IsoBank. The other is about the R package assignR for predicting the origin of biological samples using stable isotopes. Check out the workshop recordings here and the new AssignR package vignette here.

Lunch Break Science with the Leakey Foundation

2021/05/06

It was a great pleasure to share some of my research and career stories with Arielle Johnson (the Leakey Foundation) and the audience LIVE across multiple social media platforms. My favorite session was that we shared photos of objects from the field and we asked the audience to identify them. Our audience completely rocked the identifications! Great questions about research, career, and future perspectives. Check it out on YouTube!

Vaccinated!

2021/04/19

Feeling extremely fortunate to have received both doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 (a.k.a Coronavirus). Thank you to all the scientists who made various products of highly efficacious vaccines available to most people in the U.S. (and hopefully soon to the entire world). Every single person being vaccinated is one step closer to defeating the pandemic!

Moved to Salt Lake City

2021/02/04

It has been more than a year since I last boarded an airplane... Traveling seems to be buried in a distant past, and digging it back out fuels my anxiety. This photo shows that most of the shops at Terminal 4 of JFK were closed. Not sure why Delta allowed the two adjacent window seats to be both occupied... Did it violate distancing rules? Or was it entirely up to the company? Lots of questions for sure...