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In Conversation with NYU Shanghai Senior Yang Xiaohan

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When she looks back on her time at NYU Shanghai, Yang Xiaohan ’19 says her four years here have been dominated by two themes: Her community service and  efforts to expand opportunities for poor children in China, and her work toward a double major in Finance and Data Science.

Yang is a native of Chengdu, in Sichuan Province. During her sophomore year, Yang co-founded the NGO FutureChina with some high school classmates to connect teenagers from economically disadvantaged families in southwest China with educational resources.

“We run a training camp where we invite 50-70 high school students from poor areas of Sichuan Province to workshops run by college students who have a proven record of academic excellence,” explains Yang. “We cover topics like business, computer science, and economics.”

As the group leader for students interested in business, Yang shows them how to create a business plan one step at a time, and encourages them to put their ideas to paper in a creative, yet methodical fashion. Most of the students end up writing business plans with ideas about how to give back to society and serve others, says Yang. “That really touched me. Many of them want to do something about the environment. They want to build companies in garbage sorting and reuse and they need some help developing the ideas and sorting out the impracticalities.”

Yang Xiaohan (first from left) with high school students who participated in training camp.

Yang has been engaged in social impact activities at NYU Shanghai since her first year. At first, she joined  the Stepping Stones Videolink initiative to give remote English lessons to fourth graders in Sichuan and Henan every week. Later, she joined the Deans Service Scholars, a university initiative to provide students opportunities to serve and study in disadvantaged communities in Shanghai and Asia, on a trip to Yunnan, planting trees and building a new habitat for the black snub-nosed monkey. While there, she noticed that most of the men and women in the area had left the region to find work, while only the old and young remained in the villages. The children had no parents to look after them, and had to walk for hours to school.

Realizing the inequalities in education resources in Henan and Yunnan spurred Yang’s  efforts with FutureChina.

Jiang Ying, the group leader for the DSS trip to Yunnan, recalls meeting Yang for the first time during the interview for DSS. “She spoke very simply, but one thing she said left a deep impression on me,” remembers Jiang. “She said she’d heard about DSS at NYU Shanghai in high school, and that’s why she came here. She seemed anxious throughout the interview, but when she told me about this, there was a light in her eyes.”

Anna Kendrick, Clinical Assistant Professor & Director of Global Awards, taught Yang in a Global Perspectives on Society section during her first semester at NYU Shanghai. Kendrick has witnessed her growth over the past four years. “I admire her positivity and deep sense of justice,” says Kendrick. “[She has a] thoughtfulness about how she can best leverage her skills to create change.”

Yang says she also has ambitions beyond China – and wants to bring the voices of China’s poorest children to the world stage. During the winter of her junior year, Yang attended the Youth Assembly at the United Nations to talk to youth leaders from around the world about the unequal distribution of educational resources. After listening to her speech, an UN official said to her that he wished that the children themselves could come share their experiences.  

During the winter of her junior year, Yang Xiaohan attended the Youth Assembly at the United Nations.

That official’s comment inspired Yang’s latest venture. Future China now also selects high school students from its training camps, and sends them to the UN’s Youth Assemblies. “Since the summer of 2018, we’ve sent five students to the UN assembly. It really impacted them, seeing so many peers on such a huge platform, actively promoting global issues,” says Yang. “These UN trips have gradually helped them transition from people who need help, to people who want to help others. Yes, abilities and resources are still limited, but the seed of wanting to help others has been planted.”

Yang says her drive to help others developed very early in her life. When Yang was in primary school, one of her grandmothers lived in a part of Sichuan that was stricken by a severe earthquake. The volunteers who poured into the area to help left a lasting impression.  “So many strangers helped them, selflessly. I also saw volunteers pitching in on disaster relief efforts,” remembers Yang. “That was when I decided I had to become like them.”

Though her interest in volunteering was set from the very beginning of her college career, Yang’s academic interests only became clear after a long process of soul-searching.

“When I started here, I wasn’t sure what I actually liked. I started taking finance classes because my family wanted me to try it,” Yang says. However, after interning at financial companies during the summers after her second and third years, Yang couldn’t see herself in the finance sector. In the meantime,  Yang had discovered a new academic interest. After taking the IMA course, Interaction Lab, to meet the science requirement of the core curriculum, Yang discovered a passion for data and coding.   

“Though it seems like I stumbled into data science, I think it was actually inevitable,” Yang says. “I was fascinated by the coding aspect. It was just so cool to realize an idea through code!”

While she was studying away in New York during her third year, Yang took the Introduction to Programming and Data Science course at NYU Stern. “It was a heavy course-load,” says Yang. “It was full-stack programming. We learned how to use web crawlers, construct databases, analyze data, and design websites.”

Yang says that the systematic nature of the course nurtured a love of data mining and analysis, and affirmed her decision to choose data science as a second major.

During study-away in New York, Yang Xiaohan also took the University Honors Leadership Course. In this class, the professor brought students to DC to visit the Supreme Court and interact with judges.

After returning to NYU Shanghai for her final year of university, Yang worked on a research project in her Machine Learning course under the direction of Enric Junqué de Fortuny, which uses linear regression, gradient descent, and neural networks. Yang and her team’s project involves concert pricing and venue selection, and is aimed at helping independent music groups set competitive ticket prices, and find the best venues.

Yang has learned to apply her data science know-how to other disciplines. She is assisting Assistant Professor Faculty Fellow of Engineering, Chen Zhibin in his work on transportation planning and new energy vehicles.

After graduation, Yang will return to Chengdu, and join a research project by the Institution of New Economic Development. “At this think tank, I will be doing research with Professor Zhou Tao, who is quite influential in China’s big data sector,” says Yang. “One of their ongoing projects is using information from CVs to analyze gender equality.”

Yang says her interest in this research topic is the real motivator behind her decision to return home. She recalls reading texts on topics of gender in her Global Perspectives on Society course during freshman year, and says this course introduced her to foundational feminist theories.

“Returning to Chengdu also means I’ll be on the ground for many of FutureChina’s efforts. We need people in Chengdu right now,” Yang says.

Kendrick says she is impressed with Yang’s determination to bring both the hard skills and ethical foundations she has built in school to her goals for social work. “She is not afraid to take risks and devote herself to her organization,” say Kendrick. “I wish her strength, courage and renewed dedication to her social efforts!”

Yang says she will miss the open and inclusive environment at NYU Shanghai. “This school is always encouraging everyone to think about who they really want to be. This gave me the courage to do what I’m truly interested in,” says Yang. “If I had gone somewhere else, perhaps I would still be adrift and unsure, afraid to make my own decisions.”

This post comes to us from NYU Shanghai. You can find the original here.

NYU Shanghai Students Win National Championships in Unilever Competition, Head to London for Finals

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Three NYU Shanghai students have won the National Championship for China in the Unilever Future Leaders’ League (FLL), a business case competition that challenges university students to work with business leaders to come up with innovative marketing and branding solutions for Unilever brands.

The team of Echo Ma ’19, Lyndsy Qu ’19, and Leanne Li ’21 bested six other groups chosen from more than 2,100 participants across 300 universities. On April 8, Ma, Qu, and Li will represent China in the Global FFL Final in London, competing against 29 other teams from around the world.

Global championship team members will be invited to join the Unilever Leadership Internship Program. Previous years’ winners have also been fast-tracked into the company as management trainees.

Ma said the team spent four months working on intensive case studies and presentations to prepare the competition, on top of coursework and internship schedules. “All those sleepless nights discussing presentations seem really worth it now,” says Ma. “We have learned so much through the process!”

Marketing majors Qu and Li met finance major Ma through the 4-credit course, “Branding and Innovation,” co-taught by Assistant Arts Professor Christian Grewell, and Assistant Dean of Business and Clinical Assistant Professor of Business Raymond Ro. 

“This particular group was well-prepared, had an engaging presence, and most importantly, they clearly articulated their idea,” says Christian Grewell. “They also stood out because each member complimented the others–in terms of how they communicated individual ideas to weave together a story, and used their public speaking skills.”

Qu, who is involved in Student Life and the Commencement Committee, naturally took on a leadership role in the team. Li, who has studied art, piano, and dance, was the team’s ‘creative.’ Ma leveraged her finance knowledge for cost and budgeting calculations. In the lead-up to crucial presentations, the team would meet every evening after class.

A screenshot of the team’s presentation on successful online campaigns by Kiehl’s and Pechoin.

For one of the challenges, the team designed a marketing campaign to make a dated skincare brand accessible to Generation Z consumers. First, the team analyzed consumer behaviors and isolated their pain points. Then, they researched successful online campaigns involving Key Opinion Leaders and short video sharing platforms like TikTok. The resulting 20-page presentation included a strategy for improving the brand’s market penetration while increasing the loyalty of existing customers.

“After each round, we received comprehensive feedback from the brand manager and marketing manager on our presentation. That feedback helped us learn what it is like to do brand marketing campaigns in the real world,” says Qu. “We learned how to use data to identify pain points for customers, and to use that information in a brand narrative.”

Scott Gu, who manages employer branding at Unilever, says he observed five key strengths in the NYU Shanghai students. “They are fluent in English, confident, hardworking and therefore reliable, academically driven, and they are all fast learners.”

Three teams from NYU Shanghai, iSkin, Timeless and Super Rise, have also made it to the China National Final for the L’Oreal Brandstorm competition this year. The competition will take place on April 2, and the teams will compete with nine other teams across China for two spots in the global final in Paris.

NYU Researchers Find Answer to How Fish & Birds Hang Together without Colliding

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Fish and birds are able to move in groups, without separating or colliding, due to a newly discovered dynamic: the followers interact with the wake left behind by the leaders. 

The findings, by a team of researchers including NYU Shanghai Professor of Physics and Mathematics Jun Zhang, offer new insights into animal locomotion and point to potential ways to harness energy from natural resources, such as rivers or wind.  

“Air or water flows naturally generated during flight or swimming can prevent collisions and separations, allowing even individuals with different flapping motions to travel together,” explains Joel Newbolt, a doctoral candidate in New York University’s Department of Physics and the lead author of the research, which appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Notably, this phenomenon allows slower followers to keep up with faster-flapping leaders by surfing on their wake.”

More broadly, the study opens possibilities for better capturing natural resources to generate energy from wind and water.

“While we currently use wind and water to help meet our energy needs, our work offers new ways to more efficiently leverage them as we seek new methods for enhancing sustainable practices,” observes Leif Ristroph, one of the paper’s co-authors and an assistant professor in NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences.

It’s well known that animals such as fish and birds often travel in groups, but the details of these interactions in schools and flocks are not fully understood.

In order to study the effects of flapping motions and flow interactions on the movement of members in a group, the researchers conducted a series of experiments in the Courant Institute’s Applied Math Lab. Here, they designed a robotic “school” of two hydrofoils, which simulate wings and fins, that flap up and down and swim forward. The flapping motion of each foil was driven by a motor, while the forward swimming motions were free and result from the pressure of the water on the foils as they flap.

The researchers varied the speed of the flapping motions to represent faster and slower swimmers and fliers.

The process may be viewed here. (credit: video courtesy of Joel Newbolt, NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences).

Their results showed that a pair of foils with different flapping motions, which would swim or fly at different speeds when alone, can, in fact, move together without separating or colliding due to the interaction of the follower with the wake left behind by the leader.

Specifically, the follower “surfs” in distinct ways on the wake left by the leader. If trailing behind, the follower experiences a “push” forward by this wake; if moving too fast, however, a follower is “repelled” by the leader’s wake.

“These mechanisms create a few ‘sweet spots’ for a follower when sitting behind a leader,” observes Zhang.

Original article first appeared as an NYU news release: How Do Fish & Birds Hang Together without Colliding? Researchers Find the Answer is a Wake with Purpose

Read additional coverage of the research by PBS/NOVA here.

Love for NYU Shanghai – Applications up 25%

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Applications to NYU Shanghai jumped 25 percent this year, bringing the total number of applicants for the 450 spots in Fall 2019’s freshman class to 16,750. Students who listed NYU Shanghai as their first choice among the three campuses of the NYU Global Network (New York, Abu Dhabi, and Shanghai) also rose dramatically – by 43% this year. This is the fourth year in a row that application numbers have grown, indicating the university’s growing popularity among high school seniors worldwide.

The NYU Shanghai Admissions office reports that the applicant pool remains extremely diverse – with students from across six continents and 149 countries applying for admission. Not surprisingly, students from the United States and China represent the majority of applicants.  

“We are seeing more and more international students seeking admission to NYU Shanghai who are eager to engage with China and with an international student body during their college years,” said Annie Lu, Director of Admissions for NYU Shanghai. “This bodes extremely well for the Class of 2023.”

Chinese applicants to NYU Shanghai also remarkably grew by nearly 45 percent to just under 3,000. And, for the first time, the NYU Shanghai applicant pool includes students from all 34 provinces and regions.  

“We are excited to have applicants from all provinces in China, which shows that NYU Shanghai is well-recognized by the Chinese public as a world class institution,” said Zhou Hong, Assistant Dean of Admissions at NYU Shanghai. “The Chinese applicants show excellent academic ability, outstanding English skills, the willingness to try new things, and the courage to challenge themselves and explore the world. We’re looking forward to welcoming the finalists to campus for Candidate Weekend.”

Overall, NYU received a record-shattering 84,481 applications for admission this fall, an increase of 12% from last year. This is the 12th year in a row that applications to NYU have risen, with the total number doubling during the same period.   

 

This post comes to us from NYU Shanghai; the original can be found here.

NYU Shanghai Professor and Colleagues Create a New Type of Quasicrystal

Posted on by Martha J Bekink

Pilkyung Moon, an assistant professor of physics and a member of the NYU-ECNU Institute of Physics at NYU Shanghai, working in collaboration with a research group from Sungkyunkwan University, have succeeded in creating a new kind of  quasicrystal.  In research featured on the cover of Science, Moon and his colleagues reported that a new kind of quasicrystal can be designed by the overlay of two periodic layers at a specific configuration.

Solid-state materials are composed of atoms. For a long time, it had been believed that periodicity is essential to arrange atoms in an ordered fashion, and such arrangement was named a crystal. In a two-dimensional space, for example, only a few arrangement patterns, i.e., triangular, rectangular, or hexagonal arrangement, can tile space without vacancy in a periodic manner.

In 1970s and ’80s, however, researchers discovered very rare patterns which can tile space in an ordered but not periodic fashion. Such novel arrangement was newly named a quasicrystal, and has greatly expanded our understanding of the atomic order. However, quasicrystals are quite rare in nature.

Professor Joung Real Ahn’s group in Sungkyunkwan University developed an innovative idea to grow two hexagonal (graphene) layers at exactly 30°, and measured various physical properties.

Professor Moon’s theoretical calculation proved that the scattering pattern observed in the experiment can appear only at exactly 30°, and even a slight deviation of the angle (e.g., 29.958°) cannot reproduce the observed pattern. This result provides solid evidence of the fact that the research team’s system is at quasicrystalline configuration. In addition, the theoretical investigation also revealed many exotic features of quasicrystals such as the emergence of infinitely many Dirac cone replicas as well as the unusually strong scattering.

The discovery of this new kind of designer quasicrystal will expand knowledge about atomic order by enabling the systematic studies on the structures lying between periodic systems and non-periodic systems. Research findings in this study will enable scientists to build a theoretical model that can describe the physical properties of this novel structure without relying on the approximations used in the conventional quasicrystal research.

Journal Reference:

Sung Joon Ahn, Pilkyung Moon, Tae-Hoon Kim, Hyun-Woo Kim, Ha-Chul Shin, Eun Hye Kim, Hyun Woo Cha, Se-Jong Kahng, Philip Kim, Mikito Koshino, Young-Woo Son, Cheol-Woong Yang, Joung Real Ahn, “Dirac Electrons in a Dodecagonal Graphene Quasicrystal”, Science, doi: 10.1126/science.aar8412 (2018)

This post comes to us from NYU Shanghai. You can read the original here.

NYU Shanghai Course Focuses on Recycling Plastic – Re-Made in China

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More than two billion tons of solid waste is generated every year by the world’s cities — a challenge that if left unaddressed, will continue to have serious health, safety and environmental consequences. This semester, nine IMA students accepted the challenge of “learning everything about plastic and plastic pollution” and finding ways to sustainably upcycle it in a new course, Re-Made in China.

“Our goal is to become as knowledgeable as possible about our subject, and to come up with viable project ideas and prototypes that can be sustainable and fair business models generating a positive social impact for local communities,” says Clinical Instructor of Arts Marcela Godoy.

The two-credit course, guided by the principles of sustainable design philosophy, will introduce students to both traditional and new technologies to address social and environmental problems. The goal is to remake plastic waste into “something valuable and even extraordinary,” be it accessories, handcrafts or an art project.

In class, students are divided into 3 groups: one focusing on developing machines to process plastic, such as shredding and melting; another experimenting with what materials plastic can be transformed into; and the third on designing new products. “I want students to work together like a design firm, where we learn about plastic together and collaborate on projects,” Godoy says.

Suhyeon Lee ‘19, who took Godoy’s class on Digital Fabrication last semester and has signed on for Remade in China, says she is excited about learning what can be done with the overflow of trash. “I am going to gather discarded materials and combine them to produce an object that we can enjoy again — either an artistic sculpture, musical instrument, daily necessity, or even something personal that is meaningful to someone.”

Godoy’s idea of recycling emerged in 2012, when she was working in New York at YesYesNo, a studio for interactive arts and technology projects. She noticed the huge amount of waste generated from projects, and decided to upcycle the materials to make necklaces and other accessories.

“How ironic that things to make people feel beautiful can be made out of the opposite,” she says.

Marcela Godoy on the right, showing a student how to use the plastic shredder that she built.

Godoy is encouraging her students to become even more deeply engaged with the community they live in, by assigning projects that take them out of the classroom, such as creating “trash maps” tracking plastic trash routes through Shanghai.

“I am going to invite a person who collects recyclables from trash in Shanghai to share his experience,” Godoy says, “Students will then be assigned to research and interview people on their own to find out where the plastic trash is produced and disposed of.”   

Godoy also plans to invite seasoned designers from Precious Plastic Shanghai,a social enterprise devoted to raising plastic pollution awareness in China, to offer hands-on coaching to students in a workshop later in November. Godoy worked with the team after moving to China in 2015.

At the end of the course, Godoy plans to launch a “Re-Maker Space” for the benefit of the whole NYU Shanghai community, where all students and faculty can drop by to process plastic and make something valuable of their own.

The seven-week course is expected to conclude on December 11. Following the end of the semester, Godoy will present her class’ work at the Precious Plastic WANA Conference in Abu Dhabi on December 16-17.  

 

This post comes to us from NYU Shanghai and the original can be found here.

NYU Shanghai Hosts Workshop on Holocaust Studies

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This week, scholars from around the world gathered on campus to discuss and present new research at NYU Shanghai’s first-ever workshop on Holocaust studies. Co-hosted by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum(USHMM), the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum (SJRM), and NYU Shanghai, the workshop focused on the role the city and people of Shanghai played in harboring Jewish refugees during World War II and the lasting legacy of that act of generosity.

“Historically, Shanghai has always been a welcoming city and providing shelter to the Jewish refugees may have been its greatest ever act of welcome,” said Provost Joanna Waley-Cohen. “Today, in many parts of the world, we are again witnessing large-scale and sometimes forceful displacement of people, with refugee camps becoming even more commonplace. The need to understand the mistakes and tragedies of the past, and to cultivate compassion and support for refugees has never been more urgent.”

Chen Jian, director and curator of the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum

The five-day workshop showcased more than a dozen research projects, ranging from literary narration and memorialization of the Holocaust to the impact of gender in German literature of the Holocaust. Leading historians such as NYU Professor of History David Engel and Chen Jian, director and curator of the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum, presented, led, and participated in discussions throughout the week.

Waley-Cohen said the workshop not only presented junior academics with an important opportunity to share new, original, and unpublished research, it also introduced participants to the Holocaust Museum’s rich and underutilized archival materials.

In his remarks, Chen spoke of how SJRM is devoted to commemorating Shanghai’s historic role in sheltering Jewish refugees in the 1930s and 1940s, and to ensuring that Shanghai’s experience becomes part of a global conversation.

“The relevance of the Holocaust to China’s history and culture lies in the fact that, during a time of need, China was able to provide emotional and tangible support to Jewish refugees who looked to settle down here,” Chen said.

Yong-jian Zhao, a lecturer of history at Zhejiang Gongshang University, recalled the lives of  “Jewish friends of China” such as Israel Epstein and Sydney Shapiro who were among 20,000 Jewish refugees who found a safe haven in Shanghai during the war. Unlike their fellow refugees, Epstein and Shapiro chose to remain in China after the war, embracing the goals of the Chinese Communist Revolution.

“I want to explore the origins of this group, to identify reasons for China’s appeal to Epstein and Shapiro and to other Jews like them, and to explore how they, looking back after years of living in China, assessed their own lives and their Jewishness,” Zhao said.

During the week, workshop participants visited the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum in Hongkou district, where they were introduced to the research tools and resources available at both the SHRM and the USHMM.

NYU Professor of History David Engel

In his presentation on Monday, Engel, the Maurice R. and Corinne P. Greenberg Chair of Holocaust Studies and Professor and Chair of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at NYU, made a forceful argument for why Holocaust studies should be relevant to people of all backgrounds and nationalities. He addressed questions that some Americans have been asking for decades: Why did the US government spend millions of dollars on building a museum that chronicles the history of an event that did not happen in their homeland?

Professor Engle encouraged the audience to reflect on “not so much what does the Holocaust say as about me as a member of ‘Group X’ or ‘Y’, but what does the Holocaust say about me as a human being, unlabeled, unidentified?”  

By considering the events of the Holocaust as a human being as opposed to a member of a country that had little to do with the horrors of World War II, the event becomes a lot more relevant to each of us, he said.  

The workshop concluded on 19 October.

 

This post comes to us from NYU Shanghai and the original can be found here.

NYU Shanghai Professor Zhang Zheng to Head Amazon’s New AI Lab in Shanghai

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NYU Shanghai Professor of Computer Science Zhang Zheng has been appointed Director of Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) newly-opened Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Lab, where he will lead the company’s advanced research and development of deep learning.

AWS made the announcement on September 17 at the 2018 World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, shortly after Zhang, a U.S. citizen, became the first foreigner to receive a work permit from the Pudong government allowing him to hold simultaneous positions at Amazon and NYU Shanghai.

An award-winning expert in the theories and practices of large-scale distributed computing and its intersection with machine learning, Zhang held significant positions at Microsoft and Hewlett Packard prior to beginning his career at NYU Shanghai in 2013.

At Amazon, Zhang, who will maintain his appointment at NYU Shanghai but take a leave of absence from his university duties, plans to build a lab that researches natural language processing with a special focus on Chinese. He also hopes to engage and develop an open-source deep learning ecosystem and advise Chinese customers on machine learning and AI adoption.

“I’m honored to join the AWS AI Lab Shanghai, where, together with some of the world’s brightest minds, we will have the opportunity to spur innovation, make technologies easy, fast, and useful for Chinese organization of all sizes,” Zhang said.

“One of the areas I will emphasize is fundamental research via a lab with global culture, and do so in tight collaboration with major universities in Shanghai, including NYU Shanghai,” he added.

Earlier this month, the Exit-Entry Administration of the Pudong Public Security Bureau, as part of its efforts to attract high-end foreign talent, issued Zhang its first-ever work permit allowing foreigners to work part-time in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone. NYU Shanghai Chancellor Yu Lizhong applauded the new policy.

“As a research university, NYU Shanghai encourages its faculty to conduct further research on cutting-edge frontiers and help cultivate global talent,” he said. “The fact that Professor Zhang can now play a key role in the research and development of a leading industry is of great value to the university, enabling us to strengthen our  partnerships with leading companies.”

Professor Zhang is not the first NYU Shanghai community member to take advantage of the government’s efforts to clear hurdles and enable more foreign citizens, particularly innovators and entrepreneurs, to work in Shanghai. Last June, Tyler Rhorick ‘17 became the first international student to obtain a work permit under a new policy allowing foreign graduates of Chinese-accredited universities such as NYU Shanghai to obtain visas to work in Shanghai’s Free Trade Zone. Rhorick now works in NYU Shanghai’s Student Life Office.

Another alumna, Lathika Chandra Mouli ‘17, an Electrical Engineering major, obtained a new “Talent Visa” from the Shanghai Yangpu district that is reserved for recent college graduates employed by startups or Fortune 500 companies. Mouli joined Energo Labs, a blockchain startup, as a project specialist after graduation.

 

This post comes to us from NYU Shanghai. The original can be found here. 

NYU Shanghai Making an Impact with Deans Service Scholars

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The 2017-2018 Deans Service Scholars program is open to all NYU Shanghai students and allows selected scholars the opportunity to learn about community development and service through a progressive learning experience. This experience includes classroom interaction, direct service, and travel.

This year’s DSS program spanned the topics of health, education, environmental protection and community development in Anhui, Hunan, Yunnan and Cambodia, respectively. Here’s what our DSS students saw and did this year:

 
1. Chi Heng Foundation (CHF) 智行基金会

Our DSS Group had a memorable experience in Anhui with our visits to an orphanage, home visits to HIV-affected families, visit to a village affected by HIV, and interacting with the Chi Heng students. 

As part of Qing Ming Festival, we held a kite decorating activity where we asked HIV-affected children to draw their hopes and dreams for the future. Some shared dreams about becoming a music star, others dreamed for world peace and good health. We then flew our kites and watched as we flew our dreams to the sky.

2. PEER 毅恒挚友计划

Group photo of DSS PEER group on the last day in Yuanling NO.6 High School 沅陵县第六中学
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The DSS scholars on a visit to a local community in Cambodia. NYU Shanghai students taught at Sunrise English school for two days.

4. ​Yunnan Green Environment Development Foundation (YGF) 云南省绿色环境发展基金会

 Students planted trees to provide food for the endangered snub-nosed monkey.
A group picture after planting trees on Snow Mountain:
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
DSS YGF students share unique cultural experiences with Uncle Yu, a local farmer who has been working for 20 years to protect the mountain’s snub-nosed monkeys: 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
This post comes to us from NYU Shanghai. You can read the original here.

Commencement across the world!

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It is the time for celebrating graduating students across NYU’s global network. The All-University Commencement Exercises will take place on Wednesday, May 16 at Yankee Stadium in New York. 

 

NYU Abu Dhabi’s 5th Commencement ceremony will be held on Sunday, May 20 at its campus on Saadiyat Island.

NYU Shanghai’s second Commencement ceremony will take place on Wednesday, May 23 at the Shanghai Oriental Art Center.