Xiaowen was born and raised Shenyang, China, where she part of a competitive chorus team, singing traditional children’s music. She then attended college in Liaoning University, where she studied Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. However, she was more serious about her singing and dancing career than her science until the end college, when she began planning for graduate school. She then attended SUNY-Buffalo for graduate school, doing her PhD work with Matthew Xu-Friedman. There, she studied activity dependent synaptic plasticity in the auditory system. She joined the Nelson Lab in 2020, where she is planning to study the circuit basis of cognitive dysfunction in Parkinson’s disease. In the time of coronavirus, Xiaowen set up a small home-made laboratory in her apartment, which entailed beam breaks, solenoids, and a small plush mouse. She is now working on In Vivo Las Vegas, which incorporates the lights and sounds, as well as sweetened-condensed martinis, of the casinos.