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I am a neurodivergent, a global citizen, and an agender person.
Please do not make assumptions about me. To me, the concepts of nationality, race, gender, and age; cultures and religions; and the institutions of marriage and family are relics of humanity's tribal past. I do not approve of what creates conflicts and hinders evolution, so I do not define myself in such terms.
Please do not enquire about my origin. Being aracial and acultural, I do not have a home country and I refuse to celebrate any festivals. If you really need to know for practical reasons, the UK is my passport country. If you are a racist and as such need to know more, I am originally from Ethiopia: the cradle of Homo sapiens. Let us recognise our common roots in Africa.
There are similarities between my belief in our potential to be more than our chromosomes and the transgender rights movement. It would therefore be hypocritical of me to not identify as non-binary in protest against patriarchy. My correct pronouns are they and them.
Early Life and Education (Until 2012)
After an unremarkable childhood impeded by undiagnosed autism and my parents' mistake of sending me to school late, I immigrated from Hong Kong to the UK, but I refuse to be defined in relation to either place. My early development culminated in an angsty period at a boarding school in Kent. I was unhappy with the environment, but I could neither explain why nor change it. In retrospect, I was collecting data which I was not equipped to understand. Academically, I was very confused too. An internship at the Chinese University of Hong Kong introduced me to organic synthesis but put me off experimental work. On the other hand, my subject combination ruled out many theoretical disciplines. In the end, I picked chemical engineering only because it appeared to be an employable degree.
Ironically, this uninspired choice led me to my intellectual home. At Imperial College London, I began to form my worldview, became a yogi, and developed an interest in theoretical biology. My fellow chemical engineers and I learnt a key lesson from our time together. Given the right circumstances, genuine solidarity in the face of seemingly unbridgeable differences is possible. In order to venture into the life sciences from my chemical engineering background, I did a series of interdisciplinary research projects. While in Australia as an exchange student at the University of Sydney, I worked in bone tissue engineering. During an internship at the National University of La Plata in Argentina, I built quantitative structure-activity relationship models for acetylcholinesterase inhibitors. In my final year, I built a dynamic model of the unfolded protein response in the context of Alzheimer's disease. I left Imperial with an MEng degree and more importantly, a desire to understand life in every sense of the word.
Finding my Feet (2012–2019)
I started my quest to understand life in New York City on a shoestring budget. At Columbia University, I studied chemical engineering from a more theoretical perspective and was introduced to biophysics. Additionally, I was involved in two research projects about SNARE-mediated membrane fusion and nucleosome formation. In order to support myself financially, I worked as a teaching assistant for three semesters.
Although I had the option of doing a doctoral degree at Columbia, my department had a molecular bent, making it incompatible with my burgeoning interest in systems-level problems. I left Columbia with an MS degree and returned to England, transferring to the University of Southampton. In my years as a PhD candidate, I formulated a theory to explain lymphatic development. In the process, I learnt aspects of mathematical biology and applied mathematics. This period saw my growth into an independent and confident member of society. I partially made up for my embarrassment of not having worked part-time at school and university. At one point, I had three jobs on top of my degree. I also endured a cancer scare, took up painting, and began an amateur chess career. Towards the end of my graduate studies, as my views became clear, I intended to adopt the name 11250205 for the person I had become. First, like the transhumanist FM-2030, I wanted to protest against humanity's collectivist mentality. Second, I wanted to protect the Chinese culture from appropriation. As the Home Office would sadly not recognise it, I took my current name in tribute to three people who had shaped me, to the belief that genuine human touches matter more than imposed ties. A few years later, it dawned on me that the Home Office is just another institution, so I began to go by the name of 11250205 too.
After becoming a doctor in bioengineering, I concluded that the stuggle to comprehend and manage complexity would define the 21st century. I was convinced that scientific computing was the best hope in this endeavour. I moved to the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in the American Midwest to take my quest in this new direction. I moved into my unfurnished apartment with around 200 USD in my bank account, but thanks to the university's campus card, I made it through the first month. In the next two years, I led the ambitious project of building a virtual immune system and living the good life in the Cornhusker State. In the course of the project, I supervised two PhD candidates and three undergraduate students. I also continued my education by completing two programmes: a whole-cell modelling workshop at the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona and Udacity's Machine Learning Engineer Nanodegree. In chess, I won the open U1600 section of the 2018 Cornhusker State Games: my first trophy.
PRIMAGE (2019–2022)
After laying the foundation of the virtual immune system—an achievement that won me the International Intellectual Benefits to Society Award from the Mensa Foundation—I wanted a new challenge, so I moved to the University of Sheffield to join PRIMAGE, a 10 million–euro Horizon 2020 project involving 16 institutions from eight European countries. We developed a cloud-based decision-making platform for the clinical management of malignant solid tumours. To this end, I built the first multicellular computational model of neuroblastoma and modelled DIPG's invasive spread.
In parallel to PRIMAGE, I conceived three projects about the origin, nature, and treatment of neuroblastoma; secured small grants; and recruited students for the projects. In total, I supervised a PhD candidate, a master's student, and eight undergraduate students in Sheffield. I also established international collaborations with the Polytechnic University of Milan in Italy and St. Anna Children's Cancer Research Institute in Austria. In order to bolster my skill set, I took a series of bioinformatics courses offered by Johns Hopkins University via Coursera. In 2021, I taught a part of the course titled Modelling and Simulation of Natural Systems at the university.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, I had time for introspection. Reflecting on my firsthand experience of intersectional discrimination crystallised my long-standing concern for social justice in academia. In 2020, I joined the Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Committee of the Department of Computer Science, contributing a little to the renewal of its Athena SWAN Silver Award for another five years in 2021. I became increasingly conscious of patriarchy too, including my own complicity in it. This process culminated in my outright rejection of all genders and hence my male privileges in late 2021. In 2022, I was formally diagnosed with autism, which partly explains why I have felt different for as long as I can remember.
Independence (2023–)
In January 2023, I joined the University of Hull as a lecturer (assistant professor): my first independent academic position. At the Centre of Excellence for Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, and Modelling, I am running a research programme investigating biological and social systems. In parallel, I passively offer consultancy services to researchers who require AI expertise for their projects, mostly in healthcare and biomedical research.
My department delivers a conversion MSc degree programme in artificial intelligence and data science. I teach the Applied AI module and give guest lectures on cancer modelling. Furthermore, I propose and/or supervise a broad range of dissertation projects every academic year. In February 2024, I became a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. I have completed courses in computer vision, NLP, speech recognition, and generative AI via Udacity and Coursera too.
Immediately after moving to Hull, I became my department's EDI champion to continue my advocacy and began my 200-hour yoga teacher training with Ann-Marie Mainprize. In October 2023, 15 years after my first yoga class, I became a qualified instructor. At the University of Hull, I have raised awareness of EDI issues such as linguistic justice and microaggressions, speaking at internal conferences, giving departmental seminars, and leading induction sessions.