Early life

Lin was born in New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 in 1978 to immigrants from Taiwan

Taiwan

Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...

.
He attended the Juilliard School Pre-College Division and later graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College while studying violin with Lynn Chang

Lynn Chang

Lynn Chang is a Chinese American violinist known for his work as both a soloist and a chamber musician. Chang is a founding member of the Boston Chamber Music Society and is currently a faculty member at MIT, Boston University, the Boston Conservatory, and the New England Conservatory of...

.

Career

Lin was hailed by the Boston Globe as a “master of the violin".

He has recorded albums for Naxos.

He is assistant professor at Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

 from 2007 to 2011.

In 2010, the internationally renowned Juilliard String Quartet

Juilliard String Quartet

The Juilliard String Quartet is a classical music string quartet founded in 1946 at the Juilliard School in New York. The original members were violinists Robert Mann and Robert Koff, violist Raphael Hillyer, and cellist Arthur Winograd; Current members are Joseph Lin and Ronald Copes violinists,...

announced that Joseph Lin would become their new first violinist in 2011, only the fourth in its 64 years. Lin also joins the Juilliard faculty in the fall of 2011.