Yunji Zhang started his assistant professorship at Penn State’s Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science in 2022, although he had already been working there for almost a decade before the new position. He received his Ph.D. in Meteorology from Peking University of China in 2016, advised by Dr. Zhiyong Meng. His Ph.D. advisor introduced the concepts of data assimilation and predictability to him when he was still an undergraduate student at Peking University, and these two topics have since become his main research interests.