CHEMISTRY · LAND · PEOPLE
A high-school chemistry researcher, field explorer, and science storyteller — working on how soil, materials, and people are connected.
ABOUT ME
I'm Daniel. I grew up between my grandparents' fields in Lanling and a vegetable plot my family reclaimed in Beijing. Those places taught me to see land not as a backdrop, but as a living record of chemistry, history, and human choices.
Today, I follow those connections through experiments, fieldwork, maps, and stories — always asking where a sample came from and who its conclusions affect.
IN TEN WORDS
Growing up between a Shandong courtyard and a Beijing vegetable plot, I learned that caring for land is a daily practice, not a slogan.
See the project →In a Chinese Academy of Sciences lab I test how zinc changes cadmium availability in contaminated soil, and what that means for wheat.
See the project →Zn-MOFs for gas separation and SiC nanowires — I like materials whose structure explains their behaviour.
See the project →
For a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization activity, I designed the Edible Kitchen — connecting balcony growing, environmental sensing, soil-to-table data, and public food education for 8,000+ people reached.
See the project →317 sampling points in Pingguo, eight metals, and a county's worth of shop interviews: measurements only mean something with the place attached.
See the project →Farmers and shopkeepers explain their choices better than any dataset. I record what they say, and the questions it raises.
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The Garlic Archive gathers fifty years of land use, plastic-mulch stratigraphy, and oral history into one walkable digital museum.
See the project →Virtual exhibitions, short films, and visual explainers let people feel an environmental problem before they read a number.
See the project →I design garlic-and-chemistry courses and tutor peers — teaching is how I re-test my own understanding.
See the project →10,800 km on the road and CMA Grade 10 at the keyboard: both taught me patience with slow, steady accumulation.
See the project →
WHAT I EXPLORE
CHEMIST · FARMER · STORYTELLER—I research the mechanisms of the land, work it with my own hands, and tell the stories of the land and its people.
CHEMIST · ACADEMIC CORE
Researching the mechanisms of the land.
As a chemist, I work to solve environmental problems at the root — from zinc–cadmium interactions in soil to gas-selective materials — and connect molecular evidence with the policies that shape how land is used.
Explore the research
FARMER · FIELDWORK · AGRICULTURE
Working the land with my own hands.
Between my grandparents' fields in Lanling and the vegetable plots my family reclaimed in Beijing, farming came before research — harvesting rice, watering vegetables, and learning what the land asks for long before any instrument confirms it.
Walk the fields with me
STORYTELLER · MEDIA · PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT
Telling the stories of land and its people.
I turn field notes and research into things people can walk into — a virtual soil history museum, the Edible Kitchen, and short films like Beef & Climate — so the stories of farmers, food, and soil reach the dinner table.
Step into the storiesSwipe to explore →
A LIFE WITH THE LAND
The same kid, fifteen years apart — one carrying watering cans in a courtyard plot, one carrying sampling kits across paddies.
THEN
a kid loose in the fields, all hands and questions
Curiosity became method ↓
NOW
the same land, read with instruments and a notebook
HONORS