I am a project student of Dr Yu Lin
I met Yu when I finished my Year 1 at ANU (at the start of 2021). During that time, I was trying to gain some research experience, but I was also afraid of contacting academics in our school (quite nervous). As I took Yu's database course, I found that he is so passionate about his course and warmly answered any questions regarding the assignemnts&lecture via email. However, when I went through Yu's homepage, I noticed he was doing bioinformatics (he was too professional to the database course during his lecture, and I thought he was doing research related to the relational database, which was so surprised). I sent him an email about my idea of gaining some research experience, I didn't even hope for a reply. However, he stated that we could have a chat in his office. And that chat was the starting point for me to start doing research in bioinformatics supervised by him.
Since then, Yu has provided me with the source to learn the background of bioinformatics (tutorial videos and related literature) and set irregular weekly discussions to see how I go with my other courses at school and my progress. Sometimes, I can even dicuss system courses with him and learn from him a lot (Which is not his expertise), he told me that he is really enjoying solving algorithmic problems and can always find a counter-example for any incorrect algorithm quickly.
In the second half of my Year 2 (2021), I was one of his tutors in the database course he taught and also got a summer scholarship supervised by him during the term break (Nov 2021-Feb 2022).
During the term break, it is my first research project and pleasure to have Yu as my supervisor. At the start, he found a paper about the reconstruction of microbial haplotypes using statistical linkage information , and we tried to improve on that. But since we found that following this paper might lead to a dead end, he immediately discovered another relevant topic, which is the final topic that Yu and I have dug in until now. During the Christmas of 2021, Yu said that he wanted to bring me to have some delicious food around Canberra. Due to the covid, he cooked some food at home for me (like stewed beef and steamed pork), which is much more delicious than any restaurant in Canberra.
In my Year 3(2022), we had regular meetings every week and discussed everything not limited to the project itself, and Yu always shared the food he thought was delicious to me. During that time, he told me that he found a place that sells Indian tea (such as masala) similar to the one he had several years ago. Yu brought me to have the masala, and he was so happy to share the delicious food with others.
As we dug deeper into the field (viral assembly), we found that none of the existing tools could even assemble the virus accurately, but we were able to design a theoretical method to resolve that, Yu told me that he wanted to solve the problem perfectly and contribute to the field, I was impressed by him, and we decide to work on that together during my honours year.
During this month (Oct 2023), Yu and I finalized the paper we prepared to submit. Yu is too rigorous in his work and taught me how to write a research paper. During the writing, we ususally spent more than 10 minutes to decide which word was most suitable to use in this section that could make the best explanation to the reviewer. We stayed together during that several weeks and had food together, and he has shared a lot about his life experience and fun facts with me. He told me that when he was in EPFL, he always staying in lab until the transport services terminated, and enjoying to walk home with his friends together (although it was too far, as he said).
Recently, we walked home together after submission and split when we reached the traffic across, as usual. However, I cannot believe I can never hear from Yu again since then, and I missed him so much.
Dr Yu Lin, my best supervisor, advisor, and closest friend at ANU motivates, teaches, and discusses the project with me this year. He guided me to the area of bioinformatics when I finished my first year at ANU, engaged with me, talked a lot of fun facts about his research experience with me nearly every day, and motivated me to start my first research project, and he even brought me to eat a lot of foods and cook some delicious hometown cuisine for me. He is the most responsible, rigorous, patient, and kind-hearted person I have ever seen in my whole life. Yu is my first and always will be my best supervisor that stays deeply in my heart, forever.
As we've decided our future research plans in my honours year, I will continue to pursue the plan we set to design and develop the most useful viral genome assembler that can indeed benefit biomedical research and genetic analysis, as his expectation.