Biography

 

Ivy grew up in Taiwan and is also a member of a Kapitan Cina (甲必丹) family in Brunei. In her early 20s, she initially trained as a teacher, but later joined the Department of Anthropology at National Taiwan University. After working at Academia Sinica in Taipei, she pursued her PhD in the Division of Biological Anthropology, which has now merged with the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge. She was a finalist for the SET for Britain poster presentation (Biological and Biomedical Science Session) held at the House of Parliament in the UK. Her research expertise lies in biological anthropology, stemming from an interdisciplinary background. Ivy has mentored and supervised students for both laboratory work and essays at the University of Cambridge for two years, and has been with NTU since 2016.

Ivy has held several roles throughout her career, including serving as the coordinator of the Medical Humanities Research Cluster at NTU , NTU iGave Ambassador of SoH, member of the International Advisory Committee (IAC) of the Chinese Heritage Centre (CHC) at NTU, a Preparation Committee member for the Conference on Pan-Pacific Anthropocene (ConPPA), an editorial board member of the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, and a topic editor for Frontiers in Genetics.

Ivy currently has three main projects below: 

I. Bioanthropology and Bioarchaeology Projects:

She is especially interested in the analysis of the health, disease, diet and nutrition of human communities, as well as population interactions. In particular, the spread of disease on a global scale from an evolutionary perspective. Her research projects explore how pathogen transference patterns via population interactions and migrations throughout human history to understand how human health has been impacted by diseases. Pathogens co-evolve with humans and have been transmitted among different regional populations to impact various societies’ health. Investigating pathogens throughout history and geographic areas sheds light on how humankind has been shaped by them and what may happen in the future. Ivy is also leading a research team in the northwestern region of China where a partial section of the Silk Road was located. She has a team working on the region, in particular the Mogou site, to better understand the interactions between early populations, their cultural exchange and how this might influence the formation of the early state of China. 
 

2. Artificial Intelligence in Archaeological Analysis:

Ivy is currently training a deep learning method called the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to classify artifact fragments and perform image restoration of archaeological fragments using Generative Adversarial Network. Preliminary results have been obtained using a Residual Neural Network (ResNet) within a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). The CNN was trained with images of artifacts, achieving a high accuracy of 96.0% in identifying background information such as dynasties. In addition, the model was able to predict the contemporary preservation and locations of the artifacts. The research results are currently being written up and planned for publication in relevant journals.

3. Python, Data Analysis and Deep Learning

Ivy is into Python, Data Analysis and Deep Learning. For those who are interested in these areas, please feel free to contact me for free materials you can use.