Years ago, Tzu-Chieh “Zijay” Tang and his peers in his high school biology club would gather after school to go on a nature hike into the mountains of Taipei, Taiwan. Together, they’d trek eight or nine miles, often reaching the summit of choice past midnight. For Tang, that’s when the mountains truly became alive.
Years ago, Tzu-Chieh “Zijay” Tang and his peers in his high school biology club would gather after school to go on a nature hike into the mountains of Taipei, Taiwan. Together, they’d trek eight or nine miles, often reaching the summit of choice past midnight. For Tang, that’s when the mountains truly became alive.
“That’s the prime time for frogs, snakes, stag beetles, and other insects,” Tang says. “That’s when they’re most active.” A budding biologist, Tang collected specimens from his hikes and expeditions into local forests and was inspired by the diversity of the different fauna he saw in natural environments.
As he delved deeper into nature, Tang developed an interest in molecular biology, and pursued life science research at Academia Sinica, the national academy of Taiwan. There, he gained a hands-on approach to performing research, and opted to continue his studies in life science during his undergraduate studies at National Taiwan University.
Before arriving at MIT, Tang also studied design and architecture, and materials science, which ultimately stoked his passion for biology and the structures of living things. Now a fifth-year graduate student in the Department of Biological Engineering, Tang is working on engineering living materials that can sense aspects of their environment and relay what they’ve sensed back to researchers.
Read more at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
