Clank Goes the Iron Heart

Born in Beijing, Sam Fan received his BA in chemistry from Case Western Reserve University in 2014. Sam’s family immigrated to the United States when he was four years old, moving out from the village of WeiJiaQiao in the Hunan province for a better life. Among his family members, his father graduated from Peking University in 1985 and went on to the Chinese Academy of Science, where his mother and father first met. His father earned a PhD in physics at the Chinese Academy of Science in 1989 and his mother earned hers at the University of Hawaii in 1999. Additionally, Sam has two uncles on his father’s side, one of whom is a professor and clinical researcher at the University of Massachusetts’ medical school, and the other an art professor at ChangSha University in China.