John completed his B.S. in Chemistry from Hope College in Holland, Michigan in 2019. There, from 2016 to 2018, he investigated the metabolic relationship of strains of E. coli by analyzing models constructed with linear programming. In the summer of 2018, he synthesized novel cobalt coordination compounds with aliphatic ligands for use as protein-specific inhibitors. In the PGS group, John works on colloidal quantum dot infrared photodetection.

Xingyu completed her B.S. in chemistry and computer science at Peking University, China, in 2020. She is interested in electroluminescence of quantum dots and wants to make bright infrared LEDs.