After enduring a long trans-Pacific flight, Mingyu lands safely in San Diego and eagerly begins research in the Engle lab. Prior to moving to the wild, wild West Coast of the United States, Mingyu completed his undergraduate studies at Nankai University, where he studied transition metal catalysis in the research laboratory of Prof. Bing-Tao Guan. In pursuit of new frontiers in catalysis (and tasty Japanese food), Mingyu also spent six months in the research lab of Prof. Zhaomin Hou at RIKEN in Japan, where he explored rare earth metal catalysts for novel C–H functionalization reactions.