Hengxing is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Institute for Global Change Biology in the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan, co-advised by Drs. Brian Weeks and Kai Zhu. Hengxing is interested in how the change in species distribution over space and time affects species interaction. Using survey data of bird populations, he is now working on how spatial range shifts over half a century may have affected local diversity and bird-bird interactions. Hengxing received his PhD from Rice University, where he used a combination of theoretical models and controlled experiments to investigate the consequences of species timing on their interactions and community composition.