Yipeng Zhou earned his master's degree from the Davis Center's REECA program in 2022 and went on to pursue a Ph.D. at the University of Michigan. During his time at the center, he was the coordinator of the Imperiia Project, an innovation fellow with the Program on Central Asia  (2021-2022), and a research associate with its Renewable Energy Transition in Central Asia project and also supported digital initiatives for the Program on Georgian Studies. He earned his bachelor's in Russian language and literature from Zhejiang University. His scholarly interests focused on the historical and contemporary relations between Central Asia and Xinjiang. More broadly, Yipeng was interested in Eurasian borderland history, particularly how geopolitical rivalries, state-building, nation-making, and personal stories intertwined in these lands. He is a promoter and practitioner of digital scholarship and is dedicated to building open-access information spaces.