Yuqing is a PhD student in the Developmental Biology program. She grew up in Shandong, China. She came to the US after high school, and she doubled majored in biology and chemistry at Lake Forest College, graduating in 2016 with Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and two senior awards for biology and chemistry respectively. During this time, she was introduced to the amazing(!) model organism Drosophila melanogaster in Dr. Alexander Shingleton’s lab. She did a senior thesis with distinction looking at the role of ecdysone, the “molting hormone”, in regulating growth under hypoxia conditions in Drosophila. Yuqing joined the Ben-Shahar lab in August 2017, and has since been working on the role of microRNA duplication in driving phenotypic innovations in Drosophila.