Derick Feng

Born in 2006 and at 17 years old, Derick has spent the majority of his childhood in the United States. From third to seventh grade, he encountered hardships that came with living overseas and immersed himself in several interests, including tennis and band. After moving back to China amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic, he started to unearth a diverse set of cultural, environmental, ideological, and political disparities that existed between the two nations. This was the initial cause of his interest in the social sciences; he now pursues a major in political science, extensively researching how non-state and state players can induce unexpected changes in the international geopolitical environment, either economically, socially, or environmentally. “The overarching goal of the social sciences is to discover how our world is truly interconnected in extraordinary ways,” he said,’ is to know the causes of things, or ‘Rerum cognoscere causas.’”