Spotlight on Elina Yi

Linxuan “Elina” Yi, one of our PRIME incoming international PhD students in Fall 2025, grew up in Zhuhai, China. Just a 30-minute drive from Hong Kong, Zhuhai has a very relaxing seaside cityscape which Elina treasures greatly. 

Cities have played an important role in Elina’s life. Before coming to East Lansing, which involved leaving China for the first time, Elina’s academic life has taken her to Guangzhou for her undergrad degree from South China Normal University, and to Shanghai for her master’s from the East China Normal University, both in mathematics education. These were two of the major cities in China, filled with perpetual business, crowds, and constant webs of interacting lives. The peaceful and quite atmosphere in East Lansing, on the other hand, stands in complete contrast to the other places she has been to so far, and she says, “I am really enjoying it!” 

A park in Shanghai where Elina used to take occasional sunset-walks during her master’s study.

Although Elina has not been in a professional job before joining PRIME, she considers herself a student and a humble learner that she continues to hold dear to her heart as her identity.  

She is primarily focused on learning more about educational theories, particularly in mathematics, to strengthen a systematic foundation of it. So far, she has been interested in the subtle interactions that happen in math classrooms, like the discourse between teachers and students, or the small behaviors and moments that numbers and data cannot possibly capture. She wants to engage with both formal and informal learning environments with an attempt to narrow down her broad research interests to more specific research questions as she dives deeper into the program. 

Elina wants to pursue an academic professional life, preferably a tenure-track position either in the US or China. She has a plan to work as a postdoc after finishing her PhD from PRIME. She wants to keep those professional options open for now and gain as much research experience as possible during her current PhD journey. 

Elina loves music and plays piano. She recently realized that for her, practicing music daily in her free time is an immense experience of joy. She also is a practicing boulderer! She mentioned, “I go to Ann Arbor and Grand Rapids weekly with friends to hit up different bouldering gyms”. She often invites other PRIME members to join her on her bouldering trips. Elina sometimes takes aimless walks in and around the MSU campus and other trails in East Lansing while listening to podcasts. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photos of Elina bouldering passionately!

Bouldering is fundamentally important to Elina’s life. What she loves most about it is that it is like solving math problems with the whole body. For her, “every route is a puzzle that requires you to analyze the holds, visualize the sequence, and find the most efficient beta before you even start climbing; you have to pre-solve it in your mind, considering angles, body positioning, and momentum, just like working through a proof in mathematics”. Additionally, bouldering is an incredible full-body workout that strengthens everything from your fingertips to the body-core. Elina adds, “when I’m feeling overwhelmed or troubled by daily stresses, bouldering becomes my meditation, it helps clear my mind of everything else”. 

 Last month, Elina took a road trip to Canada with her boyfriend—15 hours from East Lansing to Toronto and then Ottawa. Although long road trips are part of American lives, being in one for the first time, she says, was eye-opening and quite amazing— “We left at sunrise and drove through completely different landscapes. The open spaces throughout the trip are totally different from the packed building views of the cities I used to live in. I think I’m falling in love with road trips!” 

Coming from tropical weather, seeing snow for the first time in the Rockey Mountains in Canada was enthralling for her— “It was the middle of summer and blazing hot, but there we were standing next to these huge glaciers and saw the snow that hadn’t melted. Now I’m super excited to experience my first real snowfall here in East Lansing this winter!” 

 Elina has not joined any formal student organizations yet but is looking into different club memberships and volunteer opportunities at MSU. She generally loves gathering new life experiences and exploring different hobbies like snowboarding, besides her passion for bouldering. She is always up for trying something new—except probably cooking! She said, “I’m definitely not a foodie, honestly, I think I could probably live forever on just potatoes and be perfectly happy!” She finds joy in chatting with people about the little everyday things that might seem trivial but make life interesting. She also recently took a trip to Shanghai Disneyland to celebrate earning her master's degree!

 Welcome to East Lansing, Michigan and to our math ed doctoral program, Elina! We are excited to learn more about you and look forward to interacting and collaborating with you! 

 

 

Photos of Elina at Shanghai Disney, Master's Graduation