Yuping Li, new Professor of Infection and Immunity at the Biozentrum, is a rather quiet person. The pressure and stress she has experienced in her life are not immediately apparent. Particularly, being from China has not always made things easy for her. For several years, she could not visit her family. Even this interview almost didn’t take place as she was in Australia, without a visa for Switzerland, and first had to return to the USA to board the airplane bound for Basel. Yet, she takes it all in her stride.

Where do you come from originally and how did you grow up?
I come from a village in northern China, in a historical region, which was an old capital 3000 years ago. I grew up with two siblings, which is rare for Chinese due to the one child policy. But it makes sense in the context of the region that I come from. It is, in a way, very conservative, a place where the old traditions are followed more, and not everything is well regulated.

What about your family, what do they do?
Well, my parents are not scientists, they did not even go to college, as this is not common in the area in which they lived. They worked in both farming and a factory. Like many other people, they did not have enough land to rely only on farming. So, it was not easy for them.

This makes it even more remarkable that you’re now here at the Biozentrum, doesn’t it?
Well, we had a solid basic education with compulsory schooling. After primary school, I went to middle school and became very interested in physics. At that time, I wanted to become a physicist. In middle school, I had to go through a relatively strict selection process. Every year, you have an exam where they grade and rank you. The options you get are based on these rankings. Thanks to my grades, I could go to a good high school.

When did you decide to study biology?
When I had to choose a college major, it was a turnoff for me when I realized that physics is a very male-dominated field. Since I had had an excellent biology teacher in high school, I decided to study Bioinformatics.

And then you left China …?
No, not right away. After college, I wanted to go overseas. But this step was not the easiest since my undergraduate work was not really hands-on biological research. Therefore, I first worked for two years as a research technician at the National Institute of Biological Sciences in Beijing. It was while I was there that I started to apply for PhD programs in the US.

In 2013, you started your PhD at Stanford University. How did you experience this move?
Well, I had never been overseas before. And I had my first experience of how difficult it is to get a visa and how much time it takes. Actually, I received my visa on the day of my interview. I immediately booked my flight, took my suitcase, and went directly to the airport. Thanks to the time difference, I actually made it on time. It was a real hustle, but also exciting.

So after the interview, you did decide to go to California?
I did have several offers, but for me to choose Stanford was clear. When I left Beijing, it was snowing. Then I arrived at Stanford campus and saw the flowers were blooming and people were jogging outdoors. The region was extremely pretty, peaceful and warm. I just thought to myself: This is really real. So, Stanford was immediately my first choice.

What is the difference between doing research in China and in the US?
In my opinion the structures and the expectations are very different. In China, for PhD students, there is often less intellectual freedom in driving the project. Research projects are often predetermined and PhD research in general seems to be more technical.

For your postdoc you stayed in the US at the University of California…
Yes, at that time, I decided to follow the academic path. During my PhD, I worked with one of the most established model systems – yeast. Later, as a postdoc, I shifted to a non-model organism: jumbo phages. And today, I am still working on them.

What is your research about?
I am interested in phages, viruses that only attack bacteria. They are the most abundant and diverse bio-entities on our planet. You find them everywhere, from the human gut to the global oceans. Jumbo phages are huge phages that possess exceptionally large genomes and have eukaryote-like properties.

Why are they so interesting?
There is still so much unknown about phages, making them particularly interesting to study. We want to find out more about how jumbo bacteriophages interact and co-evolve with their host bacteria. We are studying the machinery that phages use to escape bacterial immune systems. We hope that the awaiting discoveries may lead to a way to fight the antimicrobial resistance crisis.

During your postdoc, you also worked as a visiting scientist at the EMBL in Heidelberg. So, you already got to know Europa a little?
It was a great experience, and actually the EMBL stay was in part the reason why my husband and I  decided to come to Europe. Heidelberg is so pretty, the people were very friendly and the infrastructure excellent. I was very convinced. 

How was working in Germany?
Working in Germany, at least in EMBL, felt really different from the US. In the US, you often do everything yourself in the lab. You don’t really have much support from institutional infrastructure such as facilities. In various European institutes, there seems to be more facilities and in-house experts available. At that time, I wanted to do some experiments, but we didn’t have experts around us for these experiments. So, I was very happy to start a collaboration with EMBL, which also allowed me to continue my research.

Why did you finally decide to come to the Biozentrum? Did you also have other options?
I had a few offers from Switzerland, Germany and the UK. What impressed me the most about the Biozentrum was the diversity of research fields, all in one department, and the fact that the researchers are among the best in their fields. Also the infrastructure with all the core facilities is great. And, on the personal side, I immediately fell in love with Basel.