Master's projects

• Full time project (Advisor: Dr.Haipeng Yu)
• 07/2024 - present
• Using quantitative genetics in fields such as agriculture, animal breeding, and evolutionary biology to understand and improve the genetic basis of complex traits. 
• Applies R language for data analysis in animal studies.

Undergraduate projects

• Individual researcher, 20 hours per week (Advisor: Michael Peyton) 
• 05/2023 – 08/2023 
• Based on the frequent deer-vehicle collisions on the I-90 highway, discussed the causes from the deer’s migration and breeding movements’ and drivers’ perspectives, the government’s measurements, and the ecological and economic effects following the collisions. 
• Drilled down to the policies and solutions related to wildlife-vehicle collisions (WVCs) of other states and advised the applicable ones that are feasible to the local conditions. 
• To reduce WVCs, proposed appeals for the public to report WVCs and wildlife movement for data collection, analyses, and workarounds, donate any resources for research and wildlife protection facilities construction, and appealed to the government to incorporate knowledge of avoiding and handling WVCs in the driver’s license test. 

• Individual researcher, 15 hours per week (Advisor: Dr. Olaf Jensen and Dr. John Lyons) 
• 03/2023 – 05/2023 
• Selected 2 tanks in the Asian and Indian rivers section, both of which exhibited multiple species of freshwater fish, and recorded a 1-minute video for each tank. 
• As no obvious changes in each species’ activity area were observed, used a random shot and plotted the spatial distributions of fishes with Excel. 
• Recorded the activity areas of species in each tank ranging by lengths and widths and the living environments of species, and discussed the influencing factors of habitat selections in mixed species tanks. 

• Leader of a team of four, 10 hours per week (Advisor: Michael Peyton) 
• 02/2023 – 05/2023 
• Mainly investigated the effects of the salinity level and competition on the growth of macrophytes. 
• Prepared for the experiments: selected 2 species for investigation, the Rhizoclonium (hair algae) and the Lemnoideae (duckweed), established experiment environment including temperature, sunlight, and culture water, prepared for growth cups with salinity levels of 6 ppt (culture water), 9 ppt, 12 ppt, and 15ppt, placed 1g of Rhizoclonium, 1g of Lemnoideae, and 0.5g of Rhizoclonium and 0.5g of Lemnoideae, respectively to growth cups of each salinity level, and prepared another 3 experiment groups for result validation. 
• During the experiment: refilled the growth cups with the culture water to keep a constant salinity level in the cups against evaporation and recorded the dry-wet mass of Rhizoclonium and/or Lemnoideae in each growth cup twice a week. 
• Data analyses: utilized Excel and R language to visualize the relationship between salinity level and the dry-wet mass of each species as well as intraspecific and interspecific competitions’ effects on the growth of the species. 
• Outcome: Completed a research paper and presented the research subject, methods, and conclusions before class. 
• Influencing Factors of the Growth of Speryeria Idalia and Viola Pedata, WISC 
• Individual researcher, 20 hours per week (Advisor: Michael Peyton) 
• 02/2023 – 03/2023 
• Focused on how environment, inheritance, and climate act on the growth of Speryeria idalia and Viola pedata. 
• Generated the relational graph between the moist level and the health of Viola pedata and predicted its population size with a growth model.