Kenway graduated with undergraduate degrees in chemical engineering and molecular biology from MIT. He entered the MD-PhD program at Harvard Medical School, completing his PhD in biology at MIT using multi-electrode recording techniques to study memory reactivation during sleep. After receiving his MD from Harvard, he completed postdoctoral work with Paul Glimcher at the Center for Neural Science at NYU, studying value coding in animal and human decision circuits. He became a Research Assistant Professor at CNS in 2012, where his work focuses on the neurophysiological, computational, and behavioral aspects of contextual value coding and decision making. He holds a joint appointment at the NYU Langone Neuroscience Institute, where he currently serves as the Computational Core Director for the BRAIN Initiative Oxytocin U19 and Study Director for the ASTOP clinical trial on neural activity changes after interventional treatment for PTSD.
Unofficial Story
Kenway was born in NYC, one of a pair of fraternal twins to parents who had fled China in the 1950s. He grew up as one of the few Asian students in Long Island suburbs, where he and his brother both excelled academically but struggled to socially adjust. This struggle was not entirely helped by skipping several grades along the way, motivated by tiger mom parenting (before the term was coined), parental distrust of public schools, and an immigrant cultural emphasis on academic and professional success. Both Kenway and his brother graduated at 15 years old and enrolled at MIT. Undergraduate life at MIT was a shock in many ways: cool kids were smarter than expected, smart kids were cooler than expected, and students like him and his brother were a dime a dozen. Kenway always imagined being a mathematician or physicist, but freshman physics quickly disabused him of that notion. Saved by freshman pass/fail, he settled on a course of biology and pre-med (to satisfy his medicine-minded mom) and chemical engineering (for his civil engineer dad), but was drawn to scientific research, working his way through research positions in x-ray crystallography (tedious) to cell biology (informative) to cell cycle proteins and oncogenetics (productive). These research experiences - along with a continuing indecisiveness about medicine versus science - led him to applying to MD-PhD programs, where he turned down MSTP funding at other schools to attend Harvard Medical School as an unofficial, unfunded MD-PhD student. Unprepared for the totality of med school, Kenway survived his first two years of classes and returned to MIT for his PhD, switching from molecular biology to systems level neuroscience and the then-nascent technology of multi-electrode recording in awake behaving rodents. Grad school was an awakening of sorts, where he discovered the joys of a variety of pursuits both academic (neural coding, computation, neural networks) and non-academic (travel, motorcycles, rock climbing). Spurred on by the prescient words of a postdoc (“You’ll graduate six months to the day you realize you are DONE with grad school”), he graduated and returned to med school, where he survived clinical rotations largely on people skills hard-earned through lab interactions rather than distant medical knowledge. To his surprise, he gravitated away from his presumed medical disciplines (psychiatry, neurology, neuroradiology) and towards surgical fields like neurosurgery - the urgency and immediate results of operations was a welcome contrast to the drawn out process of scientific research and grad school. This set up an agonizing choice at the end of medical school between neurosurgical residency and postdocs, with academic research winning in the end due to lifestyle, intellectual freedom, and a deep-seated interest in neuroscience. Kenway arrived at NYU in 2004 for a postdoctoral fellowship with Paul Glimcher, driven by a desire to examine neural circuits, cognition, and behavior in the NHP. His most cited work from that time on relative value coding and divisive normalization - which forms the basis of much of the theoretical and behavioral work he currently pursues - was initially viewed by many, including himself, as a simple test-case rotation project for a graduate student. Despite well-cited publications, grant funding, and multiple application cycles, he has yet to secure a tenure-track appointment, leading him to transition into a research faculty position. This kind of position offers both benefits (PI status for grants, mentorship opportunities with graduate students and postdocs, ability to focus on independent lines of work) and costs (lack of job security, ambiguous status in the scientific community, lower pay). Driven by a COVID hiatus, his work has shifted away from experimental neurophysiology to computational and behavioral approaches, which has opened up collaboration opportunities with scientists both within and outside of NYU. He still holds out hope for a transition to a more permanent position, focused on computational approaches to cognition and behavior, but in the meantime enjoys the time that academic research has afforded him with his young family (twins!) in the Northern Westchester suburbs.
MD/PHD， 虎妈，MIT，哈佛，NYU research assistant professor：人生难得一面镜子
他包揽了人生一切可以自豪的大牛娃元素，受上一代虎妈教育的影响。我们正在不断追求也在我们孩子身上重复和继续他的故事。从他的故事里面，你得到哪些经验和教训？
https://growingupinscience.github.io/stories/kenwaylouie
Official StoryKenway graduated with undergraduate degrees in chemical engineering and molecular biology from MIT. He entered the MD-PhD program at Harvard Medical School, completing his PhD in biology at MIT using multi-electrode recording techniques to study memory reactivation during sleep. After receiving his MD from Harvard, he completed postdoctoral work with Paul Glimcher at the Center for Neural Science at NYU, studying value coding in animal and human decision circuits. He became a Research Assistant Professor at CNS in 2012, where his work focuses on the neurophysiological, computational, and behavioral aspects of contextual value coding and decision making. He holds a joint appointment at the NYU Langone Neuroscience Institute, where he currently serves as the Computational Core Director for the BRAIN Initiative Oxytocin U19 and Study Director for the ASTOP clinical trial on neural activity changes after interventional treatment for PTSD.
Unofficial StoryKenway was born in NYC, one of a pair of fraternal twins to parents who had fled China in the 1950s. He grew up as one of the few Asian students in Long Island suburbs, where he and his brother both excelled academically but struggled to socially adjust. This struggle was not entirely helped by skipping several grades along the way, motivated by tiger mom parenting (before the term was coined), parental distrust of public schools, and an immigrant cultural emphasis on academic and professional success. Both Kenway and his brother graduated at 15 years old and enrolled at MIT. Undergraduate life at MIT was a shock in many ways: cool kids were smarter than expected, smart kids were cooler than expected, and students like him and his brother were a dime a dozen. Kenway always imagined being a mathematician or physicist, but freshman physics quickly disabused him of that notion. Saved by freshman pass/fail, he settled on a course of biology and pre-med (to satisfy his medicine-minded mom) and chemical engineering (for his civil engineer dad), but was drawn to scientific research, working his way through research positions in x-ray crystallography (tedious) to cell biology (informative) to cell cycle proteins and oncogenetics (productive). These research experiences - along with a continuing indecisiveness about medicine versus science - led him to applying to MD-PhD programs, where he turned down MSTP funding at other schools to attend Harvard Medical School as an unofficial, unfunded MD-PhD student. Unprepared for the totality of med school, Kenway survived his first two years of classes and returned to MIT for his PhD, switching from molecular biology to systems level neuroscience and the then-nascent technology of multi-electrode recording in awake behaving rodents. Grad school was an awakening of sorts, where he discovered the joys of a variety of pursuits both academic (neural coding, computation, neural networks) and non-academic (travel, motorcycles, rock climbing). Spurred on by the prescient words of a postdoc (“You’ll graduate six months to the day you realize you are DONE with grad school”), he graduated and returned to med school, where he survived clinical rotations largely on people skills hard-earned through lab interactions rather than distant medical knowledge. To his surprise, he gravitated away from his presumed medical disciplines (psychiatry, neurology, neuroradiology) and towards surgical fields like neurosurgery - the urgency and immediate results of operations was a welcome contrast to the drawn out process of scientific research and grad school. This set up an agonizing choice at the end of medical school between neurosurgical residency and postdocs, with academic research winning in the end due to lifestyle, intellectual freedom, and a deep-seated interest in neuroscience. Kenway arrived at NYU in 2004 for a postdoctoral fellowship with Paul Glimcher, driven by a desire to examine neural circuits, cognition, and behavior in the NHP. His most cited work from that time on relative value coding and divisive normalization - which forms the basis of much of the theoretical and behavioral work he currently pursues - was initially viewed by many, including himself, as a simple test-case rotation project for a graduate student. Despite well-cited publications, grant funding, and multiple application cycles, he has yet to secure a tenure-track appointment, leading him to transition into a research faculty position. This kind of position offers both benefits (PI status for grants, mentorship opportunities with graduate students and postdocs, ability to focus on independent lines of work) and costs (lack of job security, ambiguous status in the scientific community, lower pay). Driven by a COVID hiatus, his work has shifted away from experimental neurophysiology to computational and behavioral approaches, which has opened up collaboration opportunities with scientists both within and outside of NYU. He still holds out hope for a transition to a more permanent position, focused on computational approaches to cognition and behavior, but in the meantime enjoys the time that academic research has afforded him with his young family (twins!) in the Northern Westchester suburbs.
你是否唏嘘他现在的处境呢？他错了吗？
他放弃可以做neurosurgeon住院医的机会，选择的不同导致最终处境完全不同，肯定也不是当初虎妈希望的。
他最终独立了，回归平凡，但代价是不是太大？
H回来变成高中老师，S后科技公司转一圈成为歌手，S以后成为居士，小中的例子太多了。
他是超越平凡，还是就此平凡?
的决定做的不好，tenure-track工作找不到（面试不会太强）。
89年就進大學了 和紫檀網友差不多年紀
MD/PhD之後做了8年postdoc 然後又做了12年postdoc進階版 這樣一輩子career就過了2/3了
如果没有耀眼的经历，其实作为平凡人生也很精彩。
很多街精学习可能不咋样，但定位好，都能在自己擅长领域有一片天地。
他视乎不急，自己也不思考一个方向科研方向本身该如何发展和扩展。不行就得想其他研究方向。
他好像只适合大老板想好的课题，让他做。而且还得是computation的工作
爬不爬藤的不重要
全是impact factor很低的 3篇5 1篇10
這樣怎能可能拿的到tenured track的
个人能力也是问号。可惜他不自知。
我家娃正好和他研究类似，希望他总结这个教训换一下，不要从韬复撤
一般是8年
impact factor 16, 這樣就拿了PhD
有诗有远方有追求的娃大概率进不了T5藤和名校。现在的录取，就是要按照他们的路数培养，甚至太多虚假的manipulation才能进名校，与诗和远方的境界是相反的。
Need to move on. Find a tenured position at lower level school.