I once thought my path to science was a random walk—an aimless zigzag from basketball courts to physical therapy to human psychology.
But hindsight revealed a hidden pattern: my journey wasn’t shaped by a single transformative moment. Instead, each new experience was a spark in a forest of tinder, feeding a steady fire of curiosity that propelled me forward.
In 1987, my parents left Taiwan for their PhDs in chemical engineering. By 1991, they had settled in Philadelphia, where I was born in 1993. They nurtured my sense of wonder— Taekwondo? Sure. Spend all day on the swings? Go for it. I was a free-range kid: exploring, tinkering, and learning by doing.
When I was six, we moved back to Taiwan. I remember the plane’s steady hum before take-off, and the thick, humid air when we landed. Everything changed—new country, new language, new life.
We settled in Hsinchu Science Park—Taiwan’s Silicon Valley. My school was science focused, with a clear message: study STEM, drive Taiwan’s next tech innovation.
My first experiments didn’t happen in the classroom—they unfolded on the basketball court. I spent hours dissecting the arc of Michael Jordan’s fadeaway—the perfect angle, the snap of his wrist, the way his feet defied gravity. Testing, tweaking, perfecting. By junior year, I was the team captain, dreaming of the NBA.
But soon after, my knee began to ache—stiff and unyielding. An MRI revealed a benign tumor. Surgery followed, but my hoop dreams didn’t.
When basketball faded, science came into focus. Mr. Shumway’s physics class hooked me. He’d ask: why does a basketball bounce? How much force does it take to dunk? His voice may have been monotone, but his lessons had a gravitational pull, drawing my attention from the court to the world around me.
My scientific interests spread like wildfire—from physics to biology to calculus. I took every AP class, acing them all—except psychology. I scored a 3. Not quite the origin story you’d expect from a future psychology professor.
Classmates started asking me to tutor them. I traded study sessions for $1 McDonald’s ice cream—a sweet deal on a blazing Taiwanese summer day. Teaching felt like setting up a basketball assist—helping someone else score. It was my first taste of mentorship, kindling a sense of wonder in others and watching it catch fire.
In 2011, I enrolled in the Integrated Science Program at Northwestern University—a boot camp for science nerds. My classmates had their paths mapped out: PhDs, research careers, the whole nine yards. Me? I was still on a random walk. I dropped out of ISP my first semester, adrift.
Without a set path, I let my interests take the wheel. Every class opened a new world. Russian literature! Cosmology! Dynamical systems! I was all over the map, and I loved every apparent detour.
By graduation, I’d pieced together a theoretical math degree. But now what? Consulting? Finance? Private equity? Math Research? None of it felt right.
I went back to the basics: what truly captivated me? Basketball, science, mentorship—those were the threads. How could I weave them together?
Then it hit me: physical therapy. After my knee surgery, a physical therapist helped me get back on my feet. Maybe the profession could do the same for my career. I pictured myself courtside, helping athletes like Michael Jordan get back in the game.
In 2015, I started the Doctor of Physical Therapy program at Northwestern. I loved my classes— physiology, anatomy, biomechanics—and my classmates. They showed me that physical therapy isn’t just about fixing injuries; it’s about helping people.
I was drawn at first to sports therapy, but the clinical rotations changed my mind. I found my passion for neurorehabilitation. Every patient was a puzzle: how does brain damage lead to physical symptoms? What tools can help my clients recover?
I searched for answers in the scientific literature. Which therapies worked best? How could we retrain a damaged brain? I wanted more than results—I wanted to know why treatment A beat treatment B. What was the mechanism?
I shifted gears again. I applied to PhD programs focused on motor learning—how we acquire, adapt, and retain skilled movements, hoping to discover the mechanisms of motor learning that might inform new therapies for neurorehabilitation.
In 2018, I started my PhD in Psychology at UC Berkeley, joining a lab that challenged the conventional wisdom of motor learning. The old view cast motor learning as a slow, implicit process, but this lab revealed that quick, explicit decisions played an essential role.
This idea launched my research career. I used mathematical models and worked with patients with neurological disorders to explore how the brain learns new motor skills – both implicitly and explicitly. My love for sports, physical therapy, and math all found a home in this work.
When the pandemic hit, in-person research ground to a halt. That’s when an idea struck: could we move our motor learning research online?
With funding from the National Institute of Health (NIH), our idea became a reality. Instead of 20 in-lab participants, we tested 2,000 online participants. The scale was a game-changer. How does motor learning vary across populations? Most studies stick to right-handers—the convenient majority. But now, we could study lefties at scale. Turns out, left-handers adapted to motor errors faster than right-handers. The takeaway? Righties and lefties aren't the same. Diversity matters—in science and in practice.
The large sample size also offered a rare view of how motor learning changes with age. Strategic, effortful learning declined, but implicit learning—the kind that runs on autopilot—remained intact, and sometimes even improved. In other words, older adults can continue to adapt and fine-tune their movements without conscious effort—a capacity that could be harnessed in physical therapy to help preserve motor function throughout the lifespan.
None of this would have happened without NIH funding. Those dollars didn’t just buy equipment—they kept our lab running, trained young scientists, and fueled discoveries that could transform lives. With cuts to NIH funding on the table, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Losing this support isn’t just trimming a budget—it’s halting progress and derailing breakthroughs in healthcare.
In 2023, I earned my PhD and launched the Physical Intelligence Lab to uncover the principles of motor learning and translate them into clinical practice. Carnegie Mellon was the perfect fit— math-minded collaborators, a powerhouse for motor research, and a direct link to Pitt’s medical system.
One afternoon, meandering Schenley Park’s winding trails, I paused and looked back. What once seemed like a maze now unfolded like a map. Zigs can zag with purpose. All along, curiosity had been my guide.
Image by Travis Brown from Pixabay
