Shan Zuo

I attribute everything I have right now to my mom. I come from a small, actually a bit poor village in China, and at that time, even though all other parents would think that kids only need to go to middle school and afterwards send them to make money in some industry, my mom had a very big vision. She always believed that knowledge will be able to change your life. She was very strict to me and my sister, so we had good grades all the time. My mom is definitely the most important person in my life because she kind of shaped my future. She set the standard for excellence and really gave me the foundation for everything I've achieved.

The most important advice I've received is to focus on yourself and don't listen too much to the noise and disturbances around you. You can have friends and everything, but still have a strong inner peace by yourself. Some people told me to be resilient internally and to ignore those external disturbances and noises, so that you would spend your limited time and energy into something that is important to you. It's about having strong inner peace and not listening to the negative external voices or noise.

I would say to them that no matter what sort of stereotype you had in your life, or anybody else telling you that you're a girl, you shouldn't do this, you should do that, or saying something like you are a girl, boys are better than you in this, you should always ignore those disturbances in your life and just trust yourself. Whatever you want to do, just do it, and ignore all of those other noises and disturbances, whoever gives those. Believe in yourself, and believe that we girls can do the same good job as men, and sometimes even better. Don't think too much that we are a girl, we are a woman. Just trust that everybody is different, and everybody can achieve their success. Don't think too much about race, don't think too much about gender, don't think too much about all of those labels. Just trust in yourself.

The biggest challenge in academia right now is definitely sustainability and funding to support this ongoing community. Academia really needs a lot of funding to support this community, but the current federal government is cutting a lot of budgets. Every industry lacks money and funding right now, but for us, the biggest challenge is that sometimes I wish I would spend more time doing solid research with my students. However, in the meantime, actually the majority of my time is used dealing with those federal funding agencies, writing a lot of paperwork, just to go through all of those proposal applications. But every professor at the university needs to do this because the funding is always the most important thing. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to support your PhD students.

I think the most important values I consider are, first of all, honesty is very important. It's definitely the first thing I teach my daughter - always be honest. The other thing is that always be kind to other people. Kindness is also the most important thing. Every time I was in a bad position, and a little bit of kindness offered from other people, I would appreciate a lot. So be honest, and be kind to other people. And also accept everything that happens in your life, no matter if it is good or bad, accept them, and then improve yourself, building on those things. Those are quite important in my life.