Zijie Yan…gone too soon

Scientific research is a creative pursuit. As researchers, we are always looking out for new ideas and inculcate them in our work. One way to get new ideas is to explore existing ideas and bring them together with certain degree of uniqueness and utility. As part of this exploration, scientists communicate with each other and gain some new knowledge. Therefore, as researchers, we encourage and value cooperation as part of our work culture.

Over the past couple of decades, I have been greatly benefited, motivated, and inspired by many of my fellow-colleagues across the globe. Dr. Zijie Yan was one of them. I never met Zijie in person, but I and my research group have read many of his interesting papers related to optical trapping and binding of plasmonic nanoparticles. I have been following his work ever since he was a post doc at University of Chicago, and found his work creative, interesting, and illuminating, to say the least.

In 2020, during the pandemic, we exchanged a few emails related to some technical details of trapping plasmonic colloids, and he was very generous and forthcoming in sharing his knowledge. He gave me some important leads into the wavelength-dependence of trapping capabilities, and suggested a few references. These leads were very beneficial for us to build upon some concepts and techniques that we were developing in my lab, which further led to some publications. After we published some of our results, I sent him our pre-prints, and thanked him for his input.

When I heard the sad news of Yan’s untimely death at University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, I was shocked. As you may, know this was caused by gun shooting (allegedly by his own graduate student). What a tragic news.

USA has great universities. In late 2000s, I spent two of my post-doctoral years in the US (Purdue University), and it was a pleasure living and working there. As an intellectual ecosystem, USA still leads the way, and it has been home to so many scientists and intellectuals from across the world. As with any society, USA has some flaws, and among them gun violence is turning out to be a major hurdle to its own progress and values. I sincerely hope that sanity will prevail among a large section of American society, and somehow this meaningless and violent aspect of their society is eliminated.

Sometimes, we take peace of mind for granted, but it is probably the most important pre-requisite to work. It is also a timely reminder for all of us in this world to emphasize the importance of humanness, compassion and rationality. Violence is never an answer.

 Zijie was emerging as one of the stars in our research community, and what a shame that we have lost him so early. Let me end with the first few sentences of Zijie’s reply to my email in 2020:

“Dear Pavan,

Thank you for your interest on our research!  Glad to hear someone from the community……”

My thoughts are with his family and well-wishers.

Goodbye Zijie. We, as a community, will remember you.