Before high school

Academic background

My Family

Some pictures

Interests

Brief History Before High School

Iwas born in Taipei, Taiwan. I am the youngest of three children. My oldest sister Julie is an accounting administrator at the Material Science department at Stanford, and my other sister I-Chun is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at Stanford University. My family emigrated to the States on November of 1977. We settled in the town of Daly City, about 15 miles south of San Francisco, in California. I attended Daniel Webster Elementary School for the remainder of the 6th grade, Fernando Rivera Junior High School, and Westmoor High School.

Academic Background

After high school I went on to study at the California Institute of Technology. For three and a half years I stayed in the leming House. I received my B.S. degree in Engineering and Applied Science in 1988, although I concentrated more in Mechanical Engineering and took some graduate courses in Aeronautics.

Not willing to step out to the real world yet, I started my graduate studies in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Southern California and learned the crafts of being a Trojan. I did research for Dr. Fred Browand during the summer of 1988 and am now working with Dr. Chih-Ming Ho doing vortex breakdown studies on delta wings.

Due to some unusual circumstances, in 1991 my advisor decided to jump ship to UCLA after more than 15 years at USC. He joined the faculty of the Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineer Department. Since I had already finished all my Ph.D. course work already, I decided not to transfer to UCLA. However, I'm doing my research and getting paid from UCLA. I didn't realize that it would take so long to re-setup my experimental facility, and I'm still struggling to finish. Hopefully I'll be done by the end of this summer.

My Family

I met my wife Melody during Thanksgiving on 1985 at Church. It was simply love at first sight (at least for me). We have a lot in common, but mainly our love for classical music. My wife is a devout Trojan, having received her B.A., M.A., and D.M.A. in Piano Performance from the USC School of Music. We were married on March 2, 1991 and am living happily ever after!!! We are expecting our first child in December, the year of the Golden Pig! Here is a ultrasound picture of our baby (JPEG, 256k) at 11 weeks.

Some Pictures

Picture of me and my wife (JPEG, 42k)

Ultrasound picture of our baby (JPEG, 256k)

My family

Caltech friends

EFC Gospel Fellowship picture

Interests

I have been skiing on and off since high school. A bone spur at my ankle has made wearing boots uncomfortable, so I haven't done much skiing lately. When I was at Caltech I did a lot of weight lifting, along with Son Pham, Seen-Liang Thong, and Owen Nishikawa. Part of living in Southern California is playing volleyball, and I played intramural volleyball for several years at USC. I like to play beach, or two men/people volleyball. I also took a wack at Wallyball but didn't like it too much. Yes, like most Chinese I also play Ping-Pong, or Table Tennis. I won some interhouse challenges for Fleming House in table tennis. To stay in shape nowadays, I run about 3-4 times and about 20-25 miles/week. I'm hoping to get in shape for the 1996 LA Marathon.

I enjoy classical music. I played violin when I was in kindergarten, trumpet and French horn in high school, and took some cello lessons in College. I like the French impressionistic composers like Debussy and Ravel, and Russian Romantics like Scriabin and Rachmaninoff.

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