Dr. Lin Wei
Cryobiology Researcher| PleistoVentures International -  Siberian Research Station

Language / Origin: Mandarin (native), English (scientific/professional) / China

Tenure: 90-day rotation (currently Day 61)

Security Profile Notes: High Openness, high Agreeableness. Eager to collaborate. Has shared facility operational details in academic emails without realizing they were sensitive. LinkedIn: fully public.

Kat Byrne's Notes / For SA&T Specialist Use Only 

Dr. Wei is currently on Day 61 of a 90-day rotation. She has 29 days left. I am noting this at the top because it is the frame for everything else: she is genuinely, warmly, enthusiastically present at this facility for a finite window, she knows it, and she is making the most of every day of it in a way that is both admirable and, from a security standpoint, something I need you to understand carefully.

She has shared facility operational details in academic emails without realizing they were sensitive. Her LinkedIn is fully public. She finds the science here extraordinary and she talks about it the way people who find things extraordinary talk about them - openly, enthusiastically, to anyone who seems interested. High Openness means novel and interesting approaches land well. High Agreeableness means she extends trust readily and genuinely. She is not reckless. She is someone who has spent her career in academic environments where sharing information is the point, and she has not fully recalibrated for an environment where it is not always the point. Explaining this to her is on my list. I have 29 days.

Her attack surface is her enthusiasm, which is not a thing you can or should try to remove. What you can do is give her specific, concrete categories of information that require a pause before sharing, framed in terms she will respond to - which is the science, the specimens, the work. She cares about protecting the research. She has not yet connected "protecting the research" to "being careful about what I put in emails to colleagues at other institutions." That connection is makeable. I am trying to make it before Day 90.

She has, in 61 days, made friends with Sreemoti Anand, found the crack in Artie Penhaligon's Low Agreeableness by asking him genuinely interested questions about his tea-making methodology, and discovered common ground with Amya Tanaka through the production quality of 1989. She and Sreemoti have exchanged friendship bracelets. Wei's have 3D-printed mammoth charms. I am including this not because it is a security variable but because it is one of the better things that has happened at this facility since I arrived and I think it should be on record somewhere.

Track six on her playlist is called Invisible String. She annotated it herself as reflecting her belief that everything is connected - from 30,000-year-old DNA to the academic emails she sends to "friends" in China. Her quotation marks, not mine. She knows something is complicated about that framing. She has not yet resolved what. I noted the quotes when I read it and I am noting them again here for you.

Track ten is Wildest Dreams. She annotated it as the 90-day rotation feeling - she knows she is leaving soon and she wants to be remembered well. She is on Day 61. She plays Epiphany when a specimen does not survive the transition. She has a protocol for that. There is more interior life behind the enthusiasm than the surface suggests and I think she is a better scientist and a more careful person than her security profile currently reflects. She just needs someone to close the gap between what she understands abstractly and what she practices concretely, and she needs it in the next 29 days.

She is going to leave in 29 days and the facility is going to be quieter and the mammoth charms are going to stay with Sreemoti and I am going to make sure the next rotation researcher has a security briefing on day one instead of day sixty-one. That is the lesson here and I am taking it.

Dr. Lin Wei's Cryo-Lab Playlist - Staff newsletter feature, self-submitted.