Thank you for stopping by my personal website! 💫 My name is Daocheng Lin, and I am a researcher, teacher, and illustrator. Currently, I am pursuing my Ph.D. degree in rhetoric and professional communication at Iowa State University (ISU) under the advice of Prof. Charles Kostelnick. As a researcher, my research interests include data visualization, visual narrative, rhetoric of science, and emotion. Under an interdisciplinary lens, I explore how data visualizations present facts and persuade audiences in the contemporary communication landscape shaped by social media, GenAI, and the scientific communities.

As a graduate instructor in the Department of English at ISU, I teach multimodal composition courses for undergraduates. With four years of teaching experience in the Department of Visual Communication in China, I developed the concept of agency as the center of my teaching philosophy. Seen myself as a lifelong learner, I am enthusiastic to improve my pedagogy and create a classroom with more agency that empowers students and creates a more inclusive environment.

I am also an illustrator with collaboration between universities and companies including Tencent and Exxon Mobile. This identity allows me to explore my research topics with a different perspective, such as how visual embellishment can impact the perception of the facts, which is located in the “chartjunk” debate raised by Edward Tufte.