Shooting at UNC-Chapel Hill

[ladypanther]

One of the people I work with has a daughter at UNC.  He spent the afternoon trying to get in touch with her and of course terrified as were thousands of parents.

One faculty member was killed by a grad student.  What an awful thing.

[Cullenator]

Ive got a friend who's son and daughter go to Chapel Hill.  When I reached out to him to check on them he basically said that they were fine and unfazed - for them this was the equivalent of a tornado drill

 

 

 

let that sink in...

[Lame Duck]

Sounds like it could be domestic thing.

[ladypanther]

 

Sounds like Dr. Zijie Yan was an impressive scientist and an even better human being.  What a tragic loss for his family and friends.

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.

 ....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. “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. 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 2022, 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.

 .....

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.”

 Dr. Zijie Yan was a good man and a dedicated scholar, and he was senselessly killed while doing his job.

Read more at: https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/state/north-carolina/article278727509.html#storylink=cpy