Charles talks about how it is not uncommon for him to experience racism and shares a racially motivated hate incident in Montreal. He notes the importance of reporting hate crimes. He shares the significance of cultivating understanding and temper the extremes.
His research lies at the intersection between genetics and the environment where he uses DNA to discover, study, and protect biodiversity from small microbes to big endangered animals. He is also the founder of STEMM Diversity at McGill (https://www.stemmdiversity.com/), a student-led initiative to promote greater equity, inclusion, and diversity within the fields of science, technology, engineering, math, and medicine. He has also recently become heavily involved with anti-Asian racism activism after a hate incident experienced earlier this year
Charles Cong Xu was born in Wuhan, China, and grew up in the midwestern U.S. (Iowa, Minnesota, and Indiana). Through his studies, he also lived in Boston, Hong Kong, Netherlands, France, California, Sweden, and now Canada. He did my undergrad in Environmental Sciences at the University of Notre Dame, masters in Evolutionary Biology through the Erasmus Mundus Masters Programme in Europe at the University of Groningen, the University of Montpellier, and Uppsala University, and currently doing his Ph.D. at the Redpath Museum and Department of Biology at McGill University in Montreal.
