We warmly welcome Jietong Xu, who will work as a research assistant and conduct her MA-thesis research in philosophy on the AssemblingLife project!
Jietong is from Shenzhen, China, from where she holds two bachelor’s degrees, one in bioengineering and one in philosophy.
Her bachelor philosophy thesis delved into the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, questioning bottom-up causal explanations. Now, pursuing her master´s degree in philosophy, she investigates more deeply into molecular biology and the process of protein folding as an outset for developing a framework for causal explanation more appropriate for biology, and which will aid in explaining self-assembly phenomena. In addition, she is interested in the ontology of organisms, observation-theory issues, and general scientific explanations. Outside of the philosophy of science, she likes metaphysics and is particularly interested in relations, properties, and grounding.
In her spare time, Jietong enjoys video games (Japanese role-playing games), reading, writing (short stories), and museums. Her favorite author is Alice Munro (for now), and she is good at petting sleeping cats awake!
We are thrilled to have Jietong onboard with the AssemblingLife project!