Yux­u­an Li, a Chi­nese stu­dent at UTC-Com­pieg­ne in her final year major­ing in UX Design, admits she feels for­tu­nate to have stud­ied in France and to have now reached the peak of her aca­d­e­m­ic jour­ney. With a degree in psychology—a skill she has applied to her research on engi­neer­ing, the human expe­ri­ence and well-being—the young woman is con­tin­u­ing her path along the cos­mopoli­tan banks of the St. Lawrence Riv­er, Canada.

By the time this arti­cle goes to press, UTC stu­dent Yux­u­an Li will like­ly have arrived in Mon­tre­al to com­plete her final intern­ship at a lab­o­ra­to­ry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Que­bec, where she will design a train­ing seri­ous game aimed at improv­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion among nurs­es. A project that ful­ly har­ness­es her skills in psy­chol­o­gy and UX design. Hav­ing arrived in France in 2019, “where [she] had always dreamt of com­ing,” Yux­u­an Li stud­ied French, then psy­chol­o­gy at Paris Cité Uni­ver­si­ty. Admit­ted to the Sum­mer School of the Learn­ing Plan­et Insti­tute [for­mer­ly the Cen­tre for Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Research, Ed] in the sum­mer of 2022, the young Chi­nese woman focused on men­tal health and obses­sive-com­pul­sive dis­or­der, immersed her­self in improv­ing her Eng­lish language—which she had lit­tle com­mand of—and took an inter­est in elec­tron­ics, game design and 3D print­ers, all of which were new to her. She is cur­rent­ly pro­to­typ­ing her robot, Lumi­age, capa­ble of tim­ing dai­ly actions (such as hand­wash­ing) for peo­ple with these dis­or­ders. Yux­u­an Li has formed a col­lab­o­ra­tion with a doc­tor­al researcher at the Pas­teur Insti­tute, whose work focus­es on devel­op­ing a robot designed to improve the mon­i­tor­ing of psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­or­ders using AI. This curios­i­ty about the inter­ac­tion between psy­chol­o­gy and tech­nol­o­gy had already led her, dur­ing her under­grad­u­ate intern­ship, to explore these issues at the Cité des Sci­ences and to observe robot­ics-relat­ed prac­tices at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hos­pi­tal in Paris.

“UTC has helped me grow”

For the Chi­nese stu­dent who joined UTC-Com­pieg­ne after study­ing psy­chol­o­gy and com­plet­ing a prepara­to­ry pro­gramme and who is now fin­ish­ing her final year of her Master’s degree, “UTC is a renowned uni­ver­si­ty in France. The edu­ca­tion I received there tru­ly helped me grow both aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly. I’ve devel­oped a wide range of tech­ni­cal and cog­ni­tive skills. I was sup­port­ed there. If I’d stayed in Chi­na, I would have done some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent because the sys­tem is very dif­fer­ent. The French sys­tem real­ly gives stu­dents the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pur­sue and car­ry out their projects.” While she admits she’s always “been used to hav­ing side activ­i­ties” and “find­ing free time,” Yux­u­an Li was deeply involved in UTC’s stu­dent life: danc­ing, choir, ten­nis, hand­ball… And in the university’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions depart­ment, which took advan­tage of her skills to pro­duce videos high­light­ing UTC stu­dents’ tal­ents. While she was able to trav­el through­out Europe, North Amer­i­ca is, for her, “anoth­er con­ti­nent and anoth­er cul­ture to dis­cov­er. I’m even think­ing of set­tling there, focus­ing my research and work on peo­ple and their dai­ly well-being, and per­haps explor­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an elec­tron­ic process capa­ble of trans­lat­ing emotions.”

IL