Scientific community mourns slain UNC Chapel Hill professor | Raleigh News & Observer

A stunned academic community mourned Zijie Yan Tuesday, describing the UNC physics professor slain on UNC-Chapel Hill campus as an enthusiastic scientist and outgoing friend.

Yan was identified as the victim in Monday’s shooting at Caudill Laboratories in arrest warrants filed in Hillsborough, where his graduate student Tailei Qi is being held on charges of first-degree murder.

Tributes poured in Tuesday from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where Yan had studied, and from Tulane University, where Doug Chrisey, his former advisor, recalled publishing 17 papers with Yan while his student was still learning English at RPI.

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“He would knock on my door with incredible experimental results and a huge smile,” Chrisey wrote. “He would leave feeling he didn’t understand anything about the nucleation and growth of nanoparticles, but still with a huge smile.”

Chrisey was also struck by Yan’s selflessness with his time. He regularly helped his lab mates, without ever considering the acknowledgment he would receive in exchange, Chrisey said.

“He had a resting sweet face — and everything about his personality was consistent with that,” he said.

On Tuesday, a week after the campus shooting, Chrisey posted a Gofundme page in Yan’s memory, saying, “It is from your loving friends and is meant to help us carry on the kindness you showed us in your life.”

After finishing his PhD, Yan became a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago under the direction of Norbert Scherer, who recalled his pioneering work creating a new type of material called optical matter.

“Over the 12+ years that I have known Zijie, my impression of him has only grown; from a very focused and determined young scientist to one of the most creative colleagues that I know,” Scherer wrote in an email.

Yan joined UNC-Chapel Hill faculty in 2019, after spending several years as a professor at Clarkson University. He ran a lab in the Department of Applied Physical Sciences with two undergraduate students, one research assistant and three PhD students, including Qi.

Just last year, the Yan Research Group congratulated Qi on publishing his first paper, and UNC had promoted his work on “optical tweezers” earlier this month.

Researcher and teacher

Yan came from Jingmen in Central China and received his undergraduate and master’s degrees at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, according to a Watertown Daily Times article. He lived in Apex and had two young children.

He was scheduled to teach an undergraduate engineering course this fall on fundamental and applied materials science, according to a UNC course catalog.

“Our research goal is to transcend the boundary between photonics and materials science by developing new techniques to control light-matter interactions at the nanometer scale,” his website stated.

But colleagues hesitated to focus on his university accomplishments rather than “the beautiful person” they lost.

“He was a great cook and would cook for all his roommates wherever he lived,” Chrisey wrote. “His microwaved lunches were the ones you wanted to steal. He was a very sweet man and I am devastated that his life ended needlessly from gun violence.”

A campus in mourning

In a message to the UNC campus the day after Yan was killed, Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz said he had met with Yan’s colleagues and family to express condolences on behalf of the university.

UNC at 1:02 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 30, will ring its Bell Tower in honor of Dr. Yan, he announced.

“I encourage every member of our campus community to take a moment of silence during this time,” the chancellor said. “This is an important way that we can come together as a community to recognize the loss we feel and to support one another.”

UNC System President Peter Hans echoed this, praising the university’s patience, professionalism and focus in the hours after the shooting.

“This is a day of mourning for Tar Heels everywhere,” he said in a news release. “Dr. Zijie Yan was a good man and a dedicated scholar, and he was senselessly killed while doing his job. I join everyone in the Carolina community in condemning this act of violence and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Dr. Yan’s family, friends, students, and colleagues.”

This story was originally published August 29, 2023 1:32 PM.