This year marks NYU Shanghai’s second annual series of N.E.T. Awards for Academic Excellence. The N.E.T. Award for academic excellence aims to stimulate students’ progress in academic research and recognize students who have made outstanding achievements in their work. From a competitive pool of talented applicants, 4 recipients were selected across disciplines.
The N.E.T. Program Award Committee is honored to announce ECNU PhD candidate Yuhan Lu as this year’s recipient of the new N.E.T. Award for Academic Excellence. For Lu, the N.E.T. Award, “has provided me with great encouragement and positive feedback in my work.”
What is the current focus of your research?
I use neuroscientific techniques to explore how the brain processes speech and language. My work is driven by a desire to unravel the mysteries of human cognitive functions, with the ultimate goal of contributing to advancements in communication and rehabilitation for individuals with speech and hearing problems. My work examines how the brain instantly and efficiently derives meaning from sequences of words. Our brains group words into large structures (e.g., phrases and sentences) based on syntax, rather than analyzing the individual meanings of words, one at a time, and then connecting them together.
Besides speech comprehension, I’m also interested in speech production. For example, when we vocalize a sequence of words it’s possible that one or two syllables may be mistakenly replaced by another or swap location. When this occurs, how does the brain know that there is a speech error and how does the brain efficiently compensate for such errors? Resolving these questions can deepen and expand the current understanding of speech production, which can provide neural evidence for the brain-computer interface and help people who cannot speak be able to communicate.
Can you describe the support and mentorship that you have received from your faculty advisors?
During my PhD studies, my work has been supported by my supervisor Dr. Xing Tian, and I work in his lab, SLANG, here at NYU Shanghai. Dr. Tian encourages me to always keep going and has taught me firsthand how to be an independent learner, thinker and researcher. One of the biggest problems PhD students encounter is stress and pressure. In his research family we learn how to maintain a good work/life balance and know that we have the support of our professors. I think that he has built a comfortable and positive environment for teachers and students that is not always common in a culture where relationships between teacher and students are often hierarchical. Here Professor Tian treats us like friends and colleagues. His door is always open. Rather than directing us to do something he always discusses things with us and offers both support for our research and emotional support. He is a role model to me both in the school and in his research family.
What challenges have you faced as a researcher and how did you overcome them?
The field of neuroscience is multi-disciplinary. When you try to solve a specific problem it takes a lot of different methods, concepts and theories from other fields which means that you will have to study many things that you are not familiar with. My work was a challenge to me at first because the theories in my research field are complex and tangled. But I quickly learned to collaborate and to reach out to colleagues for help. An example that comes to mind is in linguistics, a field with many nuanced subfields. Whenever I have encountered a problem I cannot resolve, I reach out to friends in linguistic departments in different schools across the world to get help solving it.
What does it feel like to be a member of the N.E.T. community?
I think the best part of the N.E.T. Program is that it brings us a mature educational system, where, thanks to the staff and faculty, students can always seek help and request help from NYU Shanghai, NYU NY and across the world. I’ve collaborated with many of my professors and colleagues and we frequently work together which has been of major benefit to my research.
I think the N.E.T. community provides us with a very positive academic environment that educates and trains us to be pure hearted researchers. Here, the N.E.T. community does not have a culture based solely on beating out the competition. Rather, our community has a pure ethos, that we only focus on the significance and novelty of research and focus on results and improving our work.
How do you think this award will influence your research?
This award has provided me with great encouragement and positive feedback in my work. The application has also been an important training process where I have had the opportunity to practice presenting my research to the general population as well as to known specialists in a variety of fields. Throughout the process I have received valuable feedback and learned how I can improve my work in the future.
As I enter my third year of my PhD I have made great progress on my dissertation studies thanks to the help of my supervisor and colleagues. I would love to spend a year in other university, such as NYU NY campus, to continue my work, and I believe that this award has prepared me to make this dream a reality.