Chapter 821 - I Want to Study Mathematics With You!

Academician Li was right to be jealous.

Actually, almost the entire Chinese academic community was envious of Lu Zhou.

With a Nobel Prize and a Fields Medal under his belt, not to mention two academician positions, he could easily initiate a ten-figure project just by writing a letter. Thousands of noob researchers would kill to just publish one thesis.

Not to mention, he was only in his twenties...

He was the apex scholar of all scholars.

However, he wasn’t just jealous.

In addition to his jealousy, Academician Li Qingquan also admired Lu Zhou. Professor Lu’s achievements in China would take most people multiple lifetimes to accomplish.

Therefore, it made sense Lu Zhou was being taken so seriously by the Chinese government.

Lu Zhou was miles ahead of ordinary scholars.

By the time the State Administration for National Defense conference on the lunar mass driver project ended, Lu Zhou had already left Beijing and was on his way back to Jinling.

He finished all of his work for the Lunar Orbit Committee for now. He finally had some time to set the Lunar Orbit Committee aside and focus on Jin Ling University.

Not to mention he still had to mark his students’ theses. Hence, he had to come to the mathematics department office every day.

“Yesterday I received a reply from the International Materials Reviews editorial department. Congratulations, your thesis has been published.”

Han Mengqi stood in front of Lu Zhou’s desk, and she was pleased to hear the good news. She sighed in relief and had a comforting smile on her face.

She had been preparing for the past six months for this graduation thesis. The knot in her heart was finally untied, and she could take a break for now, at least until next summer.

Lu Zhou looked at Han Mengqi and smiled.

“Don’t relax just yet, have you thought about what to do after graduation?”

Han Mengqi scratched her head and shook her head. She hesitated for a bit and said, “I... haven’t thought about it.”

“Start thinking about it...” Lu Zhou looked at her with a serious expression and said, “If you want to do a PhD, you should start preparing by the beginning of next year. If you want to graduate, you should start looking for a job soon. If you’re applying for jobs, I can write a recommendation letter for you.”

Han Mengqi stared at the ground and said in an awkward manner, “Professor, can I ask you a question?”

Lu Zhou smiled and said, “Go ahead, answering questions is my job.”

“What does... doing a PhD feel like?”

“What does it feel like? That’s quite a generic question.” Lu Zhou contemplated it for a second before saying, “How should I describe it... Actually, it’s quite similar to what you’re doing right now. The only difference is your mentality.”

“Mentality?” Han Mengqi tilted her head, and she was intrigued. “Can you be more specific?”

Lu Zhou: “Simply speaking, PhD and master’s students do roughly the same thing. The difference is that master’s students are mainly focused on learning scientific research tools, such as graphical models or Markov chain simulations. They use these tools to solve the small problems they encounter in their scientific research. During this stage, the tools used to solve these problems are recommended to the students by the supervisor. The students are responsible for finding the solution.”

“But for PhD students...” Lu Zhou paused for a second and recalled his time as a PhD student. He then said, “Phd students are mainly responsible for solving problems with new tools. The problems can be created by the students or the supervisors. At this stage, the students would have the ability to find new, novel problems. They might also be able to create new tools. That means, when you’re a PhD student, you’re doing scientific research on your own... Do you get what I’m trying to say?”

“Ah...”

Han Mengqi, who wasn’t paying attention, suddenly looked at Lu Zhou.

She noticed Lu Zhou was staring back at her, and she suddenly blushed and scratched her head as she said, “Sorry... I kind of dozed off.”

Lu Zhou said, “It’s fine, I can tell you’re thinking about a million things right now. Whenever I get confused because of a problem, I tend to lose my attention span as well. No need to apologize.”

Han Mengqi asked, “You get confused by problems as well?”

Lu Zhou played with the pen in his hand. He went silent for a while, as if he didn’t know how to answer this question.

However, after contemplating for a bit, he answered vaguely, “Of course, everyone encounters difficult problems at times. Even I can’t make the right decision all of the time. Even today, there’s a problem that I can’t find a good solution to.”

Han Mengqi was suddenly curious about what problem Lu Zhou was talking about.

Han Mengqi took a deep breath and encouraged herself to ask.

“Can I ask what problem it is?”

“It’s a personal problem...” Lu Zhou coughed and said, “Anyway, you are talented at scientific research. If you continue on the academic path, I’d recommend you to choose the computational materials science field. Especially fields such as the Berry phase and topological effects in phonons, the development of 3D topological materials, and hydrogen storage. These are all popular fields, and you will be able to produce good research.”

The goal of computational materials science was mainly to build predictable or descriptive models to help study the mechanism of materials and reduce the time and cost of new material development.

Ten years ago, this was still a new discipline, but now, it had become mature. Especially after the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, many research institutes opened a computational materials science research department. Most of the time, a strong materials science research department would hire a talented PhD student, so it had relatively good job prospects.

As for easy to produce good research...

Honestly, that was just relative to Lu Zhou’s other laboratories.

The Jinling Institute for Advanced Study was a world-leading experimental institution in fields such as aerospace materials, carbon materials, and new energy. Many materials science academic journals had even “retained” the theses produced by this institute. Therefore, it was easy for the Institute for Advanced Study to produce good research in this field.

Han Mengqi went silent for a while, and Lu Zhou stared at her while playing with a pen. Lu Zhou suddenly asked, “What are you thinking?”

“I think...”

Han Mengqi bit her lip and contemplated it for a long time.

Finally, she looked up with determination and said, “I want to... study mathematics with you!”

Lu Zhou: “...?”