Through the Lens of Zitao “Albert” Yang

Zitao “Albert” Yang ’23 has been described as “Einsteinian” by his teachers. He is one of the youngest volunteer researchers at UC San Diego who has published a paper with Professor Elena F. Koslover, Ph.D. He revels in solving complex math and physics problems—so much so that he introduced physics competitions to his peers at LJCDS, fostering intellectual growth and camaraderie. Albert is also the winner of the National Merit $2500 Scholarship. 

Albert shares his experience below. 

When I was a sophomore, I was interested in competition physics like U.S. Physics Olympiad and Physics Unlimited Premier Competition. I wanted to see if other people had the same interest on campus. At the beginning of junior year, I started the physics team with Mr. Doerge as an advisor. He helped me set up the competitions on campus, and he proctored a lot of the competitions. There was some interest but not a lot. They are mostly individual competitions, so it doesn’t matter if you have a team. We did a bunch of problems together. I really enjoy doing challenging problems on a whiteboard with the team. 

I qualified for U.S. Physics Olympiad twice through F=ma exams but could never compete because of my nationality. They only allow U.S. citizens or Green Card holders to compete. Additionally, I competed in the Physics Unlimited Premier Competition and got seventh place in the U.S. in 2021.

There were other equivalents of the Physics Olympiad in biology and chemistry: U.S. National Chemistry Olympiad and USA Biology Olympiad. I signed up to compete in both of them. I did not prepare for them much, but my AP Chem and AP Bio experiences helped me significantly. Mr. Lineback and Dr. Wolfe prepared us so well for the AP exams. I just thought I could give them a shot. Chem Olympiad was mostly AP concepts, so I confidently finished the exam; Bio, however, included many non-AP concepts. Fortunately, I qualified for both of them.

On an Impactful Teacher
Dr. Wolfe has had the most significant impact on me. Prior to AP Bio, I had zero interest in biology. However, I was intrigued by the amazing concepts we learned in AP Bio and wanted to understand how biology works physically. I discovered a field called biophysics, which tries to explain biological systems from a physical, quantitative perspective. After AP Bio, I started a long research internship in biophysics. Without Dr. Wolfe, I would probably never even think about biophysics. 

In January last year, I was looking for a research internship. I was initially very interested in particle physics. I reached out to several professors. They all responded to my emails, which was very nice, but they all said no because I had little to no experience working with quantum field theory or general relativity. Then, under the influence of Dr. Wolfe, I started paying attention to biophysics. UCSD has a very strong biology program, so I looked at their list of faculty members and found two professors whose research interests me. Since Dr. Wolfe did her Ph.D. at UCSD, she was familiar with the department and encouraged me to contact these professors. I emailed Professor Elena Koslover, and she said yes after a short chat.

In June, I started working with her. We’re a theoretical group, so we don't do experiments at all, although we get experimental data from outside collaborators. We mainly try to model biological transports with math and simulation. My first project was to understand how channel parameters affect the exit rate of diffusive particles through pore-covered membranes. 

On Filmmaking 

I initially took filmmaking just to fill my art credit in junior year, and it was a really fun class. Recently, we finished a 17-minute short film. It’s based on a true story that happened to someone in China during COVID. I don't think I'll ever get into filmmaking as a career, but one thing about Country Day is that we can try different things simply for fun. These experiences can turn out to be fruitful.