I was trained as a field oceanographer and obtained my PhD in Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, focusing on field experiments of microzooplankton grazing and flow cytometry. Then I worked as a postdoctoral researcher working with Dr. Andrew Irwin and Zoe Finkel at Mount Alison University, Canada. 

Thereafter, I worked at Xiamen University, China, and was deeply involved in a China National Basic Research Program (“973” Program) entitled “Carbon cycling in China Seas-budget, controls and ocean acidification (CHOICE-C project)”. In 2012, I was awarded the New Century Excellent Talent by the Ministry of Education of China. In 2015, I was awarded the David Cushing prize offered by the Journal of Plankton Research. 

From 2015 to 2018, I worked at Japan Agency of Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) on a CREST project entitled "Developing a new marine ecosystem model to represent the adaptive capacity of plankton in the N. Pacific" (PI: S. Lan Smith) funded by Japan Science and Technology Agency.

Since 2018, I have been working as a Chancellor's Fellow at the University of Strathclyde until 2022 when I was promoted to a Senior Lecturer. Currently, I am supervising five PhD students. 

I am honoured to serve as an associate editor for the journal of Limnology and Oceanography, which is the flagship journal of Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO).

The primary focus of my research is how biodiversity affects marine ecosystem functioning such as primary production and biological carbon pump, for which the primary producers particularly phytoplankton play the pivotal role. The main questions I ask are:

i) What are the main patterns of functional traits, diversity, biomass, and productivity of primary producers including phytoplankton and macroalgae in the ocean?

ii)  What are the main processes determining these patterns?

iii) What are the fundamental roles of diversity on ecosystem functioning?

One specific question that has been intriguing me during the past several years is whether there exists a difference of temperature sensitivity between autotrophs and heterotrophs. While this appears a simple/trivial question, I have found that it can be a central theme linking statistics (regression), ecology (Metabolic Theory of Ecology and trait-based approaches), and earth sciences (biological pump and Glacial/inter-glacial CO2 fluctuations).

Theoretical Ecology; Biological oceanography; Ecosystem modeling;  R, Fortran, Matlab.