I enjoy playing piano, photography, and cooking while not working on academic tasks. Those activities are fun and keep me passionate about life. They are also great distractions outside of the academic world. My philosophy is simple: to be passionately engaged in both life and work. By prioritizing life’s activities that invigorate and foster persistence, I believe I can maintain a heightened sense of energy and dedication in my professional endeavors.
I started teaching myself piano when I was a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, mostly because of the access to many practice rooms with top-tier grand pianos at UT. Playing the piano has become one of the most important parts of life ever since. I enjoy the feeling that the note slips out of my finger and becomes a melody. I had my first piano recital in the east bay area in CA and it was a wonderful experience.
Photography is an important part of my life. I particularly like taking portrait photos. I enjoy making edits to some photos to make the story look interesting. For example, I took two photos of myself (No.6 and 7 on the right side), one acting as an instructor and the other as a student, and overlayed them together as a single “self-teaching” story. This self-copy effect was used in the supporting information of one of my papers to demonstrate the different sampling approaches used in that study.
Chenyang Bi's personal website 