Mentor Dr. Hailong Yang feels research is innate in humans. We are driven by curiosity to understand how and why things work from different perspectives regardless of background and disciplines. Dr. Yang wants to nurture this quality into the next generation of researchers at UMass and the PROPEL program allowed him to interact and work with students at a deeper level. Dr. Yang’s advice for mentors is to prepare themselves to let curious students into their team with a heart to teach them step-by-step the skills from coursework to bench-level while making sure they get as many opportunities as they can. For students, he advises them to be very serious about research, be prepared to show unique research interests, and communicate their career plans. Dr. Yang is a postdoctoral researcher using both computational and functional biology to study grass species in Prof. Madelaine Bartlett's Lab.