“How have you been?”
Except, it’s not me asking the question. That’s the brilliant thing about Hannah Liu (C '25)—I might be the interviewer, but for her, asking about others is just second nature. Hannah exhibits the rare ability to make everyone she meets feel cared for, a talent that lends itself to her leadership roles in student government, greek life, the pool, the classroom, and beyond.
Though Hannah is always offering her light to others, she also saves some for herself, using it to illuminate her understanding of her past, present, and future. She recognizes and deeply appreciates the support system she had growing up and now dedicates herself to being a similar pillar of support for those around her at Penn, all while envisioning what she hopes to achieve beyond college and working towards those goals.
Hannah’s joy is infectious and her passion is apparent, but underneath her energy is a softer quality—maybe the most appropriately epitomizing quality of them all: kindness. Even after the formal interview is over and I’ve stopped recording, Hannah continues our conversation, walking with me as far as we can both go in the same direction on Locust Walk, at one point even stopping to introduce me to someone else she thinks would be “perfect” for an Ego of the Week. When we have to part, she hugs me, and I feel like I know everything I need to know about her.
Whether she’s researching applications for artificial intelligence, or advocating for student athletes at Penn, or just listening to a friend who needs to vent, Hannah and her zest for life transform every activity into a labor of love.
Name: Hannah Liu
Hometown(s): Lincolnshire, Ill., Xi'An, China and Fuzhou, China
Major: Cognitive Science, with a double minor in Computer Science and Chinese
Activities: Varsity Swimming and Diving, Communications Director of the 52nd Session of Undergraduate Assembly, Zeta Tau Alpha, Intercol, CIS 1100 and CIS 4120 TA, Research at Penn Medicine
Where do you call home?
I’m from Chicago, but more specifically, Lincolnshire. Lincolnshire is a suburb around 30 to 45 minutes out from Chicago. I’ve lived there all my life, until I came here to Penn. But I also did spend like half of my childhood in China, specifically Xi'An and Fuzhou—I would go every single summer. It unfortunately dwindled out as I got older and older, and then when COVID happened it completely stopped, but I just went back for the first time in five years last summer. So those are my hometowns. Whenever someone asks me where I’m from, I think, “Yes, Lincolnshire, Ill.” But I also attribute living in China for all my summers to a lot of who I am today.
When you came to Penn, did you envision the trajectory you’re now on?
I don’t know if I actually have one linear path. I feel like I'm a conglomerate of a lot of different things I do, and coming into Penn, the main thing for me was really that I just wanted to do everything that I love.
When I was in high school, I only focused on two things: swimming and studying. That was because my main goal, my absolute number one goal as a young swimmer, was to get recruited in college. I wanted to be the first Division I athlete in my family, because nobody in my family in China knew what that meant.
So I came in here thinking there were so many things I couldn't do in high school, and I just wanted to do anything and everything that interested me. I wanted to be a different person than I was in high school: somebody that was really well–involved in campus, a part of many different communities, and able to make connections between them. That's so refreshing to me, and that's something I couldn't do in high school. That's what really drove me to go into many different areas, the interdisciplinary nature of it. I’ve always been interested in doing a bunch of different types of stuff—that's why the things I’m involved in now are all over the place. Now, even my major reflects that! Cognitive Science is probably the most interdisciplinary major in the College; it takes psychology and combines it with other things. I think that reflects who I am.
Can you talk a little bit more about your experience as a research assistant with Penn Medicine? What kind of work are you doing right now?
I love my research, and this is something I think was reinforced after I did my summer internship this past year. I'm working with one lab in Penn Med right now, but I’ve also worked with the Wharton OIDD department’s negotiations lab and with a psychology lab under Professor Philip Tetlock, which was an amazing experience. What I do in Penn Med right now, which is the one lab that has really defined my experience, is analyze AI applications into medicine.
When I first started getting into CIS I was really interested in AI—not just on how to build AI, but what we can use it for. I saw this listing on CURF from a radiology department that wanted to do a project on applying AI to diagnostic processes and I thought, “That's super cool. I have no medical background—let's do it anyway.” I got introduced to my incredible PI and from there I learned just how amazing, if used correctly, AI can be to help our lives. It really destroyed the stigma that everybody has about how AI is going to take over jobs, take over our lives. I literally saw it save someone's life.
I went down this route of publishing a paper on a novel AI application in that field, and then going on to create these predictive models for COPD, chronic pulmonary disorder, which is a chronic respiratory disease. Now we’re looking into making that into a medical wearable, putting those algorithms in. Isn't that so cool?
Absolutely! You mentioned that you never expected yourself to get into CIS—so how did you end up here, with a CIS minor? How does that connect to your interest in AI and Cognitive Science?
In high school I did absolutely no coding, but I really liked Cognitive Science, so before coming to Penn I took the Introduction to Experimental Psychology class through the Penn pre–college program. There was this one module called AI and the Consciousness, which is actually the reason why I took CIS 1100 and ended up loving CIS. I was like, “Why didn’t I start doing this earlier?”
I think Cognitive Science is the kind of major for people who love psychology, but they really like computer science too—Cognitive Science forces you to take CIS classes. I really appreciate that, because it’s for the person who doesn't know what they want to do; it's for the person who just has too many interests, they love doing too many things. What better way of doing that than a major that allows you to do many different things? That's the whole reason that I'm now hoping to go to grad school for artificial intelligence—machine learning, specifically—and the interactions it has with governance and ethics.
You’re also involved in Varsity Swimming and Diving here at Penn. What is that like? How has swimming impacted your personal growth? What has it taught you?
As of right now—and I think I'm becoming more and more comfortable sharing this—I unfortunately no longer will be a four–year student–athlete. I'll only be a three–year student–athlete. This year, I've transitioned into the manager role.
I love the team and I love the sport of swimming, don’t get me wrong. But I think [I've been] reflecting on my experiences at Penn and whether or not I derived joy from swimming here. My priorities right now are grad school and wanting to really do something with that application and fellowships. Devoting my time towards just leaving whatever bit of legacy I could have on this campus, I think my time at Penn for swimming is done. I don't think I'm going to stop swimming altogether because wherever I end up—which hopefully will be the United Kingdom for grad school—I'm gonna still swim. But my time at Penn is done.
That being said, swimming has been one of the most valuable things in my life. It's completely shaped who I am as a person. I think swimming is the reason I can do a lot of different things because from a young age, we are taught as swimmers to balance really good academics and high performance in your sport. If it wasn't for swimming, I don't think I would have the discipline and grit or a lot of the perseverance and resilience that I have—at least I like to think I have—to this day. It allows me to bounce back even when I feel like I’m at the bottom of the pit.
Swimming has just given me so much. Looking back on my past three years of swimming, the sport is something I love.
How have your experiences in swimming influenced the things you care deeply about?
It was my dream to be a college athlete, and it was also a dream to be an Olympian. Obviously, reality hits you at one point, so now I want to bring my sport to other people. One of the main reasons I stayed in swimming and I'm continuing to stay in swimming is because when I was younger, I was the only Asian American girl I saw at my level.
I remember stepping up to the blocks, getting ready to swim, and then looking around thinking, “Oh, there's no one that looks like me.” And that's really interesting, because the sport you find your home in should be representative of you, or at least have some reflection of you. That's why I thought if a young Asian American girl could see me swimming and she was thinking of swimming, hopefully I could encourage her. Or if there’s an Asian American swimmer on the team, I hope I can be there for her because I relate to her experience.
Our new incoming class has five amazing Asian American girls. I love Maggie; I love Lily; I love Kayla; I love Amy; I love Rachel. I absolutely love all of them. They are so, so sweet. I just see myself in them, and they have so much great potential. I want to make sure that they understand that—I say that because I know what the Asian American athlete experience was like. I feel like we grew up in similar households and cultures with similar values, and I know the pressures and expectations my parents had on me when it came to swimming. It could be very different from what other people went through, but I still want to be a resource.
How does your identity connect to what you’ve accomplished in student government and what you’re working on now?
Being a student athlete is a privilege, and it has guided a lot of my advocacy and student government work. I think 95% of my advocacy work is solely focused on student–athletes. Freshman year, I helped a then–senior lacrosse player establish the excuse absence policy we now have for student–athletes. If you're skipping class for an athletic competition, that’s completely valid and you shouldn’t be penalized. Students used to be.
For the past three years, I’ve been working on some huge projects with the athletic department. Regardless of whether I'm swimming on the team or not, I'm still managing the team, and I still want to give back to this community. It's given me the opportunity to even be here, and I truly value being a student–athlete. It’s fun that sometimes it’s the last thing people expect. There's some people who see me and they know that's my foundation. Other people tell me they had no idea I swim. I think that's cool. I like surprising people.
How did you get involved with greek life?
Funny enough, I came into Penn thinking I’d absolutely never join a sorority. I had this stereotypical idea of Bama rush, and that wasn’t for me. But going into my sophomore year, I reflected a lot on what I had. I had this amazing community of friends and I was in clubs, and I loved it so much, but what I was missing was a core group of girls I could go to for anything. That’s when I started to think maybe a sorority wouldn't be a bad idea. I rushed my sophomore spring, and it was such a jarring experience—I actually hated it so much. I’m so glad I did though because I ended up in this place that I absolutely love that I think is the perfect fit for me.
This is one of the best communities I have. If I need help, I can go to any girl in the sorority, and they're always there for me. I met my best friend, who graduated last year, because of this sorority, and she has been such a role model to me, my cornerstone in everything I do. It’s crazy to think that if I hadn’t rushed, I wouldn't have met her anywhere else. That's the beauty of a sorority—you meet people you’d never meet anywhere else. We tend to self–segregate ourselves based on what our interests are because that's what our clubs and classes are for, but being in a sorority really diversified my perspective. It broadened the way I communicate with people and how I understand people. These girls challenge me to think more broadly about this campus, and I love it.
How has your background impacted your perspective?
I grew up in a community full of mentors and people who truly cared for me and supported me, but the one thing I remember echoing in my head was to focus on the future. When I chose to come to Penn, I was offered a spot in Wharton. I ultimately said no. I felt that based on my interests, it wasn’t what I wanted to do. My dad is a businessman, and when a businessman father hears his daughter saying no to Wharton … well. My dad and I had a very intense argument about why I said no, and I remember it ending with him saying, “Okay, you know what? I'm gonna trust you. The only thing I want you to know is that you need to think about your future. You need to think ahead.” That really stuck with me; everything I do now is because of that. I reflect on the activities I do and why I stay in those activities, and it's because they’re for the future, and helping people in the future.
Even before my dad told me that, so many of my mentors and interactions have been focused on my future. I've kind of embodied that mindset now. I know people say, “Live in the present,” and living in the present is good, but my ambitions are in the future. I care about both, but they're separate brains. I try to appreciate what I have now—that's something I actively try to exercise like a muscle—but everything is guided by my desire to invest in the future. My family, my club swim coaches, they were all so focused on investing in my future. They were thinking ahead for me. Now, I'm thinking of what I can do for somebody else like that.
What do you hope your legacy will be here at Penn?
When people say my name, I hope they smile. I just want people to remember that I made them happy, I made them feel welcome, I made them feel safe. That's the main thing.
Lightning Round
Early bird or night owl? Night owl, 100%.
Favorite album(s): Un Verano Sin Ti by Bad Bunny is a fantastic album; I’m a huge Bad Bunny fan. But my favorite album of all time lowkey, and this is a guilty pleasure, is Death of a Bachelor by Panic! At The Disco.
Favorite post–meet meal: Noodles and Company spaghetti and meatballs, or Noodles and Company macaroni and cheese with a shit ton of other stuff, like broccoli, carrots, peas, corn, chicken, bacon …
Favorite thing to do in Philly: Just wander, I love wandering. I don’t have a favorite spot—I just go in one direction and I'm like, “All right, let's see where it takes me.” I think somehow, though, I always end up in Rittenhouse, specifically 1–900–ICE–CREAM.
Best ice cream in Philly: 1–900–ICE-CREAM is pretty damn good, but Lu & Aug's lowkey takes the cake.
If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go? Australia, that's my next place, absolutely. Or back to Iceland. I’ve been to Iceland, but I would go to another part. You need at least four trips to Iceland before you can get the whole thing.
There are two types of people at Penn … People who take Locust and people who don't take Locust.
And you are? I take Locust, I love Locust. Call me a SABSer.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Do you know that one senior who brings a smile to everyone’s face or always has the craaaaziest stories? It’s time to give them the recognition they deserve. Ego of the Week seeks to showcase seniors not for their grades or any other fake academic construct, but for who they are as a person and the joy they bring to the people around them! Nominate your favorite Penn seniors for Ego of the Week!
