Yangyang Cheng is a particle physicist at Cornell University. Born and raised in China, Cheng received her PhD in physics from the University of Chicago, and her bachelor’s in Science from the University of Science and Technology of China’s School for the Gifted Young. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, MIT Technology Review, SupChina, ChinaFile, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and other publications.