Name: Mark Shao (Chinese name Shao Mingqi)

Occupation: Robotics expert, specializing in ability-augmenting exoskeletons and suits. However, this wasn't his first field to study in and is decently proficient in other branches of robotics.

Nationality: Sino-American

Gender: Male

Age: 26

Alma Mater: De La Salle University, a Tier 1 Catholic college located in Manila, the Philippines. Majored in mechanical engineering and minored in psychology.

Personality: From first glance, you probably couldn't tell how smart Mark is. He is a handsome yet somehow slightly irresponsible young man of Chinese descent, and more often found with a beer bottle or a shirt with a cocky saying rather than a remote control or a welder. He prefers to keep his social and professional lives distinctly apart. Therefore, the friends he makes from both spectrums of life tend to conflict with each other. He avoids talking about robotics during non-professional situations unless called upon. If he is asked to, however, he is clearly knowledgable about his area of expertise. He is primarily interested in Ability augmenting eXoskELetons (AXEL), a U.S government project dedicated to building robotic exoskeletons that Mark reluctantly left for the UNKRCI, under heavy pressure from his peers and own self-conscience.

When one does locate Mark in a professional environment, he often takes on the semblance of his creations: rather... lifeless. Not cold, but an unsettling aura of 'cool'. He isn't easily distracted. However, this may be his downfall. If a project requires him to work overtime, he sure as hell does. His colleagues back at the AXEL labs have oft observed him not sleeping for more than twenty-four hours at once, hazy eyes behind coffee-stained glasses not daring once to stray from the computer screen. However, those same colleagues have also observed him in the obviously risky and occasionally humorous process of testing out his exoskeletons himself.

Brief Bio: 

Mark was born in Beijing, China, in the autumn of 1988 to an American journalist and Chinese schoolteacher in an average middle-class district. His mother, somewhat ironically, taught his grade-school class. Mark's elementary school life was considerably different to that of the ordinary Chinese boy. Mark went to one of the few and more relaxed American international schools in the country, the tuition of which Mark's father worked long, dreary overtime hours to provide. Mark spent his tuition wisely. His mother, like many, many, many others, was a homework addict. Mark got the best of both worlds. Foreign education is what Mark partly owns to his open-mindedness and democratic ideology. Meanwhile, his mother's sheer discipline and glorifying of China is what Mark owes to his strong professional work ethic and beautifully fluent Mandarin Chinese. He was the star of the family. Not so like his brother.

The brother he never had.

Even his father, who was a spectacular storyteller, was reluctant to relate to his seven-year-old son the events of 1989, Tiananmen Square. Only after repeated questions about an extra guest room in the house and anti-Communist paraphernalia hidden in the attic did he dare to tell the tale. When Mark was barely a year old, his brother was an extremely aggressive anti-Communist Party high school dropout. He ranted on and on to his parents about how horrific the tragedies were behind Chinese prisons, and how he would free them someday. His mother sobbed while his father simply shook his head. His brother refused to listen. Eventually, on April 15, 1989 - the anniversary of Julius Caesar's death, his father told him - Mark's brother joined the growing mob of protesters at Tiananmen Square. 

On June 4, 1989, the unthinkable happened.

The Shaos were about to pack up their miniature camp just outside the Square, losing all hope in their eldest son's return, when the shots rang out. Mark's father knew how to safely and effectively dodge rifle shots from years in war reporting, and safely ushered his family to safety. A week later, a violent knock came on the door. Communist soldiers threw a body bag at Mark's mother's feet. 

They buried the body in their local cemetery. Mark strictly and regularly visits his brother's grave during the Tiananmen Square anniversary, on June 4, even if it means having to avoid kaiju for a day or two.

Upon orders from his employers, Mark's parents moved to the Philippines when Mark was twelve, in 2001. Mark's father was assigned to be an American envoy to the Philippine military and the prime expert on all their actions. A memorable experience was when Mark's father invited his son to train at a Philippine Marine boot camp for a day. Mark, inevitably, failed miserably. He often wondered if there was an alternative to hellish amounts of reps to become a good soldier. He would often draw vague yet somehow elaborate sketches of super suits that would amplify a person's normal abilities to that of a decathlete's. He was in particular inspired by the Iron Man comics and still has a secret collection in his desk at the White Gloves today. Mark decided to take the initiation test for De La Salle University, especially because of its status as one of the only universities in the Philippines that offered mechanical engineering. Mark passed with flying colors and graduated in 2009 with a major in mechanical engineering and a minor in psychology, a course that Mark found somewhat fascinating.

Mark decided to stay at the university for a while as an academic and left his brain to it. On the eve of the Philippine Independence Day in 2011, Mark demonstrated his first and probably dodgiest exoskeleton, nicknamed Buddy, in front of fifty Filipino Marines and their superiors. When Mark's family moved to America in 2012, the American military had heard all about his exploits from reports from military superiors in the Philippines and invited Mark to try out his inventions in Stanford University. With a little help from a brigadier-general friend in the Marines, Mark eventually developed the AXEL program on behalf of the government of the United States. Unfortunately, only two years into the program, Mark was highly encouraged by his father, colleagues and the military to join the White Gloves. Though he was sad to leave his AXEL program for a while, Mark eagerly continues developing exoskeletons for the UNKRCI, in the hopes that soldiers from all around the world will use them to combat this new threat.

Other: No brown M&Ms. Mark speaks English with a soft, almost undetectable Southern accent, beautiful Mandarin, and conversational Tagalog. Avid readers of Popular Science might recognize him from the cover page of the March 2015 issue, around the time of the Okinawa attack.

Also, to "unwind" from hectic work days at the lab, Mark has his own comedy/gaming YouTube channel named BawShao, set up in January 2015. He acts so unlike his usual professional cool that many people don't know who he actually is. However, also for security reasons Mark has also been required to announce a hiatus on his account upon joining the White Gloves.