Emerging Leader. In late 2011, the National Geographic channel broadcast “The Forbidden Tomb of Genghis Khan,” following National Geographic Emerging Explorer Albert Lin and his team into Mongolia’s “Forbidden Zone.” Almost a year before, readers of National Geographic Adventure magazine had voted Lin the first Reader’s Choice Adventurer of the Year—a strange twist of fate for a UCSD-trained materials scientist.
“The idea to search for the tomb of Genghis Khan occurred to me while traveling with friends in Mongolia.” says Lin, who has become steeped in Mongolian culture, and was even adopted into a Mongolian family in 2006.
Lin, whose mother is a former Hong Kong movie star and father is an astrophysicist, is a research scientist at the UC San Diego division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2). He is also the founding director/co-director of the UCSD/National Geographic Society Engineers for Exploration Program.
In preparation for mounting the expeditions to Mongolia, Lin developed a multi-institutional collaboration between UCSD, the National Geographic Society and the Mongolian Academy of Science. He also established a pioneering online public digital exploration system, which fed ultra-high resolution satellite data to National Geographic online users.Lin’s expeditions will continue, as the team may be zeroing in on the tomb of the infamous conqueror.  
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