I'm a Ph.D. candidate in Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a mentor for 10 amazing Posse scholars through the Posse program at UW-Madison.

My research explores the role of cultural beliefs about inequality, especially the meritocratic belief that hard work leads to success, in students' educational stratification and mobility patterns.

Currently, I am pursuing three lines of research:

• One line explores the dual-sided roles of students' meritocratic schemas in class-based educational stratification processes in East Asia and beyond. 

• Another line examines how country-wide meritocratic cultural climates, in both countries of destination and origin, as well as the match or mismatch between them, shape the educational stratification patterns for immigrant students. 

• The third line of research employs a Bayesian approach to assess the predictive performance of models that predict individuals' stratification beliefs in a cross-national context, considering both inequality and mobility indices and their interactions in local contexts.

My work was recognized with an honorable mention for the Best Graduate Student Paper Award from the Comparative and International Education Society's East Asia SIG in 2024. 

Outside of research, I enjoy making not-so-spicy Szechuan food, catching the precious moments of my cats sunbathing in the Midwest winter, coming up with random harmonies for songs, and going for long walks in nature with folk music playing in my headphones.