phd student shoots advisor

UNC graduate student charged with killing faculty advisor makes first court appearance

The UNC-Chapel Hill graduate student accused of killing a faculty member on Monday made his first appearance at the Orange County Courthouse in Hillsborough on Tuesday afternoon.

Tailei Qi, 34, has been charged with first degree murder for the fatal shooting of his faculty advisor, Zijie Yan, on campus. Qi is also charged with an additional felony of carrying a gun on educational property.

Authorities on Tuesday said Qi walked into a classroom building Monday afternoon, shot Yan and then left. The details shed light on an attack that led to a campuswide lockdown as police searched for the gunman.

Chapel Hill city police arrested Qi in a residential neighborhood near the campus within two hours of the attack and didn't need to use force to take him into custody, UNC Police Chief Brian Jones said at a news conference. He said investigators were still trying to determine a motive and were still searching for the gun used to kill Yan.

Qi was previously held at the Orange County jail without bond. During today's hearing, the District Attorney requested no change.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Sherri Murrell scheduled Qi’s next court hearing for Sept. 18. Additional information from the investigation is expected to emerge earlier when search warrants become public or if there’s a bond hearing.

Murrell ordered Qi to remain jailed without bond as an interpreter explained to Qi in Mandarin what was happening. When the hearing ended, Qi bowed to his interpreter, his attorney and the guards before they took him away in handcuffs. Dana Graves, a public defender who represented Qi at the hearing, left the courtroom without talking to reporters.

Orange County DA Jeff Nieman made a campaign promise not to seek death penalty in any case, and said he will not in this case. A 9 mm handgun is the weapon believed to be used in the killing.

Yan was an assistant professor at the applied physical sciences department at UNC, where he had been working since 2019.

"He was a beloved colleague, mentor, and a friend of so many on our campus, and a father to two young children," UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz said at a press conference Tuesday. "My leadership team and I have met with his colleagues in the department of applied physical sciences and chemistry to express our condolences."

Qi had joined Yan's research group in Jan. 2022, according to Qi's Linkedin profile. Campus police said he appeared to have gone directly to Yan in Caudill Lab and then left.

The belltower will ring at 1:02 p.m. on Wednesday in honor of Yan and a vigil is being planned for tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. outside Caudill Laboratories.

The shooting Monday afternoon triggered a campus lockdown, in which thousands of students and faculty sheltered in place for about three hours.

The university is encouraging students to use mental health resources on campus. Classes have also been canceled Wednesday.

WUNC's Eli Chen, Elizabeth Baier, and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

UNC-Chapel Hill graduate student charged with murder in shooting of faculty member

HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. — A graduate student at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill was charged Tuesday with f atal ly shooting a professor — the latest incident in a spate of national gun violence — leaving a college community reeling and authorities trying to determine a motive.

Tailei Qi, an applied physical sciences major from China, made his first court appearance in Orange County Court, where he was charged with first-degree murder and ordered held without bond.

Qi, 34, was shackled in an orange jumpsuit and relied on a Chinese translator. He was also charged with possession of a gun on an educational property, which is expected to be upgraded from a misdemeanor to a felony.

His public defender made no public statement after the hearing. A probable cause hearing was scheduled for Sept. 18.

The murder charge carries a punishment of a life sentence without parole. Jeff Nieman, the district attorney for Chatham and Orange counties, said after Tuesday's hearing that he would not seek the death penalty.

So far police have not said why Qi is believed to have targeted Zijie Yan, an associate professor in the applied sciences department since 2019.

Aidan Carter Scott, 22, a computer science major, said Yan had been one of the suspect's advisers.

"I had had contact with the shooter two semesters ago and had helped him with his homework in our machine learning class," Scott said.

Scott said Qi struggled to keep up with the course material.

"It always seemed to me like he didn’t really know what was going on in the class, but it always seemed like he meant well and was doing his best to stay on track," he said. 

A university department web page that has been removed had listed Qi as being a member of Yan’s lab group.

Qi was arrested Monday afternoon after the shooting at Caudill Labs, a science building on campus, which prompted an hourslong lockdown that forced students and faculty members to barricade themselves in classrooms and dorms as authorities searched for the shooter.

The attack, which occurred in the second week of the fall semester, began when students were alerted to an armed and dangerous person after 1 p.m. The university said in another alert at 2:24 p.m. that the shooter remained at large. A photo of an unnamed person was released, and Qi was arrested later in a residential neighborhood near campus.

Videos shared on social media showed panicked students hiding in classrooms and others climbing out of the windows of a campus building . The lockdown was lifted at about 4:15 p.m.

UNC Police Chief Brian James said the lockdown, which included neighboring public schools, continued even after the suspect was taken into custody as law enforcement agencies verified his identity and investigated reports of potential other victims.

"We had to ensure that the entire campus was safe," he said Monday.

No other injuries were reported.

James declined to say Tuesday whether other people may have been in the room when the shooting occurred. He said that officers responding to the scene did not encounter Qi and that "he must have exited that building very quickly."

On his LinkedIn profile, Qi says he enrolled at UNC's flagship campus in January 2022 as a graduate student and research assistant, and he shares links to papers about his research in metal nanoparticles. A paper published last month in the journal Advanced Optical Materials was co-written with Yan.

Qi's LinkedIn profile says he previously studied at Louisiana State University and schools in China, including Wuhan University, before he came to North Carolina.

The firearm, described as a 9 mm handgun, was not immediately recovered. Authorities said they would be interviewing Qi about a motive.

James said that investigators were still trying to determine the nature of the relationship between the suspect and the victim and that they would be reviewing any social media accounts Qi appeared to use.

Investigators are "looking at what his intentions were and why he actually did it," James told reporters Tuesday.

Qi has had previous contact with law enforcement. He was pulled over for allegedly speeding in Orange County in February and then again two days before the shooting, when a state trooper issued him a citation for driving about 20 mph above the speed limit on an interstate, according to the court in neighboring Alamance County.

Kevin Guskiewicz, UNC-Chapel Hill's chancellor, said Tuesday that classes would be canceled again Wednesday and that the bells in the campus' well-known Bell Tower would ring in honor of Yan at 1:02 p.m.

"We will continue to ask questions and find ways to make our safety procedures even more effective," Guskiewicz said. "We know that the wounds of this tragedy will not heal quickly."

Kate Martin reported from Hillsborough and Erik Ortiz from New York.

Kate Martin is an enterprise reporter for NBC News, based in North Carolina. 

Erik Ortiz is a senior reporter for NBC News Digital focusing on racial injustice and social inequality.

Hannah Schoenbaum, Associated Press Hannah Schoenbaum, Associated Press

Gary D. Robertson, Associated Press Gary D. Robertson, Associated Press

Sarah Rankin, Associated Press Sarah Rankin, Associated Press

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University of North Carolina graduate student charged with murder of faculty member

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (AP) — Police charged a University of North Carolina graduate student Tuesday with first-degree murder in the fatal shooting of a faculty member that caused a campus lockdown amid a search for the gunman.

Tailei Qi, 34, is due in court later Tuesday for an initial hearing in the Monday killing of Zijie Yan inside a science building on the Chapel Hill campus. In addition to the murder count, he is charged with having a gun on educational property.

READ MORE: Faculty member fatally shot in University of North Carolina science building

Yan is listed on the school’s website as an associate professor in the Department of Applied Physical Sciences, while Qi is listed as a graduate student in Yan’s research group.

Qi, who lives in Chapel Hill, was arrested during a roughly three-hour lockdown that followed the shooting, authorities said at a Monday news conference.

“To actually have the suspect in custody gives us an opportunity to figure out the why and even the how, and also helps us to uncover a motive and really just why this happened today. Why today, why at all?” UNC Police Chief Brian James said. “And we want to learn from this incident and we will certainly work to do our best to ensure that this never happens again on the UNC campus.”

Campus police received a 911 call reporting shots fired at Caudill Labs just after 1 p.m. Monday, James said. An emergency alert was issued and sirens sounded two minutes later, starting a lockdown that led frightened students and faculty to barricade themselves inside dorm rooms, bathrooms, classrooms and other school facilities.

Officers arriving at the lab building found a faculty member who had been fatally shot, James said. Based on witness information, police took the suspect into custody just after 2:30 p.m., according to the chief.

Jones declined to elaborate on the arrest, but TV station WRAL reported that it took place in a residential neighborhood near campus.

The lockdown was lifted around 4:15 p.m. No other injuries were reported.

“This loss is devastating, and the shooting damages the trust and safety that we so often take for granted in our campus community,” Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz said.

Yan led the Yan Research Group, which Qi joined last year, according to the group’s UNC webpage. Yan earned his PhD in materials engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York and previously worked as an assistant professor at Clarkson University. He joined the Chapel Hill faculty in 2019.

Qi is a graduate student in the department of applied physical sciences who studies nanopartical synthesis and light-matter interaction. He moved to the U.S. from China after earning a bachelor’s degree in physics at Wuhan University, according to the UNC webpage for the Yan Research Group.

The shooting sparked fear at the state’s flagship public university, just a week after students returned for the start of the fall semester.

Clayton Ulm, 23, a graduate student, said he was in a class of about 50 to 70 people when they were told to go into lockdown. The alarm system had gone off, but screens in the classroom had also glared with the lockdown order.

READ MORE: Police still searching for motive in UNC Chapel Hill shooting

“Then there was quite a bit of panic as students were trying to figure out what to do,” Ulm said in a LinkedIn message while still in the classroom, heading into his third hour of lockdown. “Then we all started hiding beneath our chairs and under desks. Some students went and locked the doors.”

Students started listening to police scanners to try to get information about where the shooter was, Ulm said. The panic eventually subsided. And people were allowed to use the nearby restrooms. Still, he called it “surreal seeing the mass panic.”

About two hours after the first alert went out, officers were still arriving in droves, with about 50 police vehicles at the scene and helicopters circling over the school.

It took about an hour and a half to lift the lockdown after the arrest because authorities were making sure they had the right suspect in custody, James said.

Police also had received calls around campus about other potential victims and gunshots that needed to be checked out, he said.

“We had to ensure that the entire campus was safe,” James said.

James said it was unclear if the suspect knew the victim. He also said the weapon has not been found.

“We are looking for a firearm. It is too early to determine if the firearm was legally obtained,” he said.

The university, with about 20,000 undergraduate students and 12,000 graduate students, canceled Tuesday classes.

Robertson reported from Raleigh, North Carolina, and Rankin reported from Richmond, Virginia. Associated Press writers Jonathan Drew in Hillsborough, North Carolina, Sarah Brumfield in Silver Spring, Maryland, and Ben Finley in Norfolk, Virginia, contributed to this report.

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Grad student charged with murder in shooting of University of North Carolina professor

Police have arrested a University of North Carolina graduate student in the shooting death on campus of a science professor.

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Police charged a University of North Carolina graduate student Tuesday with first-degree murder in the fatal shooting of a faculty member that caused a campus lockdown amid a search for the gunman.

Tailei Qi, 34, is due in court later Tuesday for an initial hearing in the Monday killing of Zijie Yan inside a science building on the Chapel Hill campus. In addition to the murder count, he is charged with having a gun on educational property.

Yan is listed on the school’s website as an associate professor in the Department of Applied Physical Sciences. Qi is listed as a graduate student in Yan’s research group.

Qi, who lives in Chapel Hill, was arrested during a roughly three-hour lockdown that followed the shooting, authorities said at a Monday news conference.

“To actually have the suspect in custody gives us an opportunity to figure out the why and even the how, and also helps us to uncover a motive and really just why this happened today. Why today, why at all?” UNC Police Chief Brian James said. “And we want to learn from this incident, and we will certainly work to do our best to ensure that this never happens again on the UNC campus.”

Campus police received a 911 call reporting shots fired at Caudill Labs just after 1 p.m. Monday, James said. An emergency alert was issued and sirens sounded two minutes later, starting a lockdown that led frightened students and faculty to barricade themselves inside dorm rooms, bathrooms, classrooms and other school facilities.

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Officers arriving at the lab building found a faculty member who had been fatally shot, James said. Based on witness information, police took the suspect into custody just after 2:30 p.m., according to the chief.

Jones declined to elaborate on the arrest, but TV station WRAL reported that it took place in a residential neighborhood near campus.

The lockdown was lifted around 4:15 p.m. No other injuries were reported.

“This loss is devastating, and the shooting damages the trust and safety that we so often take for granted in our campus community,” Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz said.

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Yan led the Yan Research Group, which Qi joined last year, according to the group’s UNC webpage. Yan earned his PhD in materials engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York and previously worked as an assistant professor at Clarkson University. He joined the Chapel Hill faculty in 2019.

Qi studies nanopartical synthesis and light-matter interaction. He moved to the U.S. from China after earning a bachelor’s degree in physics at Wuhan University, according to the UNC webpage for the Yan Research Group.

The shooting sparked fear at the state’s flagship public university just a week after students returned for the start of the fall semester.

Clayton Ulm, 23, a graduate student, said he was in a class of about 50 to 70 people when they were told to lock down. The alarm system went off and screens in the classroom also relayed the lockdown order.

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“Then there was quite a bit of panic as students were trying to figure out what to do,” Ulm said in a LinkedIn message while still in the classroom, heading into his third hour of lockdown. “Then we all started hiding beneath our chairs and under desks. Some students went and locked the doors.”

Students started listening to police scanners to try to get information about where the shooter was, Ulm said. The panic eventually subsided, and people were allowed to use the nearby restrooms. Still, he called it “surreal seeing the mass panic.”

About two hours after the first alert went out, officers were still arriving in droves, with about 50 police vehicles at the scene and helicopters circling over the school.

It took about an hour and a half to lift the lockdown after the arrest because authorities were making sure they had the right suspect in custody, James said.

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Police also received calls around campus about other potential victims and gunshots that needed to be checked out, he said.

“We had to ensure that the entire campus was safe,” James said.

James said the weapon has not been found.

“We are looking for a firearm. It is too early to determine if the firearm was legally obtained,” he said.

The university, with about 20,000 undergraduate students and 12,000 graduate students, canceled Tuesday’s classes.

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University of North Carolina student charged with murder of faculty member

Tailei Qi arrested Monday afternoon after fatal shooting of associate professor Zijie Yan caused university to lock down

A graduate student at the University of North Carolina (UNC) was charged with murder on Tuesday after a faculty member was shot dead on campus.

Chinese national Tailei Qi, 34, was scheduled to appear in court later in the day. He was arrested on Monday afternoon in a nearby residential neighborhood shortly after the killing caused the university in Chapel Hill, North Carolina , to lock down for almost four hours.

Qi was listed on the university’s website as a student of the victim Zijie Yan, an associate professor in the department of applied physical sciences who was found dead in a chemistry laboratory.

A number of rambling messages posted to an X account, formerly Twitter, in the name of the accused killer in recent months suggest Qi, a graduate of China’s University of Wuhan before moving to the US, felt bullied at the university, was stressed by working long hours, and was troubled by a relationship with a woman he insulted as an “angelic bitch”.

“To have the suspect in custody gives us an opportunity to figure out the why and even the how, and also helps us to uncover a motive and really just why this happened today,” the UNC police chief, Brian James, said at a news conference late on Monday.

“Why today? Why at all? And we want to learn from this incident and we will certainly work to do our best to ensure that this never happens again on the UNC campus.”

James said the gun used by the shooter had not been recovered, and it was unknown if it was obtained legally.

“This loss is devastating, and the shooting damages the trust and safety that we so often take for granted in our campus community,” the UNC chancellor, Kevin Guskiewicz, said at the news conference.

Yan, the victim, had worked with the Chapel Hill faculty since 2019, the university said. He earned his PhD in materials engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, and previously worked as an assistant professor in that state’s Clarkson University.

Students spoke of being scared during the lockdown, and frustrated that the shelter in place order was not lifted until 4.15pm Monday, about an hour and a quarter after Qi’s arrest.

James explained the delay was necessary to ensure they had the correct suspect in custody and that the campus was secure.

Clayton Ulm, 23, a graduate student, said he was in a class of about 50 to 70 people when they were told to go into lockdown. He said an alarm warning of an active shooter sounded, and screens in the classroom lit up with the lockdown order.

“There was quite a bit of panic as students were trying to figure out what to do,” Ulm said in a message to the Associated Press from his classroom, where he said he had been for three hours.

“Then we all started hiding beneath our chairs and under desks. Some students went and locked the doors.”

Recent messages on Qi’s X account suggest he had a fractious relationship with a person he described as his PI, a college acronym for a principal investigator, usually a faculty member responsible for the administration and training for certain projects.

It is not known if the victim was Qi’s PI, but the accused killer was a member of Yan’s research group since last year, according to university officials.

In one message posted in October 2022, Qi appears to accuse fellow students of branding him as “lazy” and of telling tales about him to his PI.

“Both the group of people to say I am lazy and that to prove me working hard instead of telling me that are trying to consume my privacy,” he wrote. “I judge their motivation is only to tell my PI then control me by taletelling.”

In another, he wrote: “Bully in America seems to be a problem. It often comes with people not stopping them at the first time.”

A third post, dated 12 June, refers to a woman he says tried to “beg others to ‘help’ me”, with the consequence of people “looking down” on him. “Angelic bitch,” Qi wrote.

And in a message dated 31 July this year, he said he was a second-year PhD student who “would like to make some new friends”.

Investigators on Tuesday booked Qi with a count of first-degree murder and possession of a weapon on educational property.

In North Carolina, first-degree murder is punishable by life imprisonment or the death penalty.

Classes at UNC Chapel Hill – a facility with about 20,000 undergraduate students and 12,000 graduate students – were canceled on Tuesday, with all non-mandatory operations also suspended.

The university said in a statement that mental counseling was available for all students, faculty and staff.

Associated Press contributed to this report

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UNC Chapel Hill graduate student Tailei Qi charged with murder in shooting of faculty member

Tailei qi is a phd student majoring in applied physical sciences at unc at chapel hill, article bookmarked.

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A graduate student at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill has been charged with first-degree murder over the on-campus shooting that left one faculty member dead.

Tailei Qi, a second-year PhD student majoring in applied physical sciences , has been charged with the fatal shooting of his academic advisor, Zijie Yan. Mr Qi is facing charges of first-degree murder and carrying a weapon while on campus.

The suspect appeared in court on Tuesday and had an interpreter explain to him what happened in the courtroom in Mandarin, the Associated Press reports. He was ordered held without bond and his next court hearing was scheduled for 18 September.

A motive was not immediately clear. Chancellor Kevin M Guskiewicz said in a statement on Tuesday that he has met with the family of the slain assistant professor’s family.

“My leadership team and I have met with his colleagues and family to express our condolences on behalf of our campus,” the statement read. “Please join me in thinking and praying for his family and loved ones during this difficult time.”

• UNC shooting – latest: Graduate student charged with murder of faculty member on Chapel Hill campus
• A new college term, a faculty member killed and a suspect arrested: What we know about the UNC shooting
• UNC faculty member confirmed dead as active shooter shuts down Chapel Hill school

According to his LinkedIn page, Mr Qi graduated from Wuhan University in 2015 and also received a master’s in material science from Lousiana State University in 2021.

Mr Qi then joined UNC at Chapel Hill’s Yan Lab in 2022, with his profile page on the university’s website taken down by Tuesday morning.

The suspect worked as a researcher in China before pursuing a doctoral career in America.

UNC graduate student Aiden Scott, a former classmate of Mr Qi, described him as “very quiet” but “nice.”

“I would have never guessed that he would be the kind of person who could possibly be capable of this kind of thing,” Mr Scott told WRAL . “Every single time he would talk to me, he seemed very nice... when I saw his face in the reports online, I was beyond shocked,”

A Twitter account believed to belong to Mr Qi reveals that he had railed against his work and his head of lab as well as what he described as “bullies” in the US before allegedly carrying out the shooting .

In a post on 1 August 2022, he wrote: “Bully in [A]merica seems to be a problem. It often comes with people not stopping them at the first time.

“Explanation is not a solution but makes them feel others will plead them every time they raise a problem, making them voyeur to find an excuse day and night.”

UNC police had issued an alert about an active shooting situation at the campus shortly after 1pm on Monday, following reports of shots being fired in the science building.

Students were ordered to shelter in place and barricade themselves inside lecture halls amid the active situation.

Footage shared online shows desperate students and faculty members jumping from windows or hunkering down in classrooms as the UNC Police, FBI, ATF and SWAT teams canvassed the campus for the shooter.

Nearly an hour and a half into the ordeal, UNC police released a photo of a person of interest and asked the public to call 911 and proceed with caution if they spotted the individual. A name was not released but the photo released by authorities matched the one on Mr Qi’s UNC profile page.

Mr Qi was then arrested near a residential area two miles from campus on Williams Circle and the shelter-in-place order was lifted at around 4.30pm.

At a press conference later that evening, UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz and UNC Police Chief Brian James confirmed one faculty member had been killed.

The weapon used in the shooting was a 9mm, police said on Tuesday. An investigation into the circumstances and motive behind the shooting is ongoing.

“I’m grieved to report that one of our faculty members was killed in this shooting. This loss is devastating, and the shooting damages the trust and safety that we so often take for granted in our campus community,” Mr Guskiewicz said.

Mr Qi is being held by the Orange County Sheriff’s Office in Hillsborough County.

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UNC Chapel Hill PhD student charged with killing his academic adviser

An associate professor of physical sciences who was shot and killed in a lab at the University of North Carolina (UNC) Chapel Hill on 28 August, has been identified as Zijie Yan . A second year PhD student in his research group, Tailei Qi, has been charged with his murder . Qi has also been charged with possession of a firearm on educational property, which is a Class I felony in North Carolina, and is being held without bail.

At a press conference on 28 August , UNC police chief Brian James confirmed that Yan was the only fatality, and that no other injuries had been reported. He added that the Caudill Labs building on campus where the shooting took place, which houses the university’s chemistry department, would be closed until further notice while the investigation was underway. James emphasised that the motive for the incident remains unclear.

In recent years, Qi has published several nanoscience papers with Yan, who was his academic adviser. Both men are graduates from universities in Wuhan, China.

Yan’s group engaged in research that aims to ‘transcend the boundary between photonics and materials science’ by developing new techniques to control light–matter interactions at the nanometre scale, his academic page says.

Source: © UNC Police/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

Tailei Qi had been doing a PhD at UNC Chapel Hill, working with his adviser Zijie Yan

Posts by Qi on X, formerly known as Twitter, reveal that he felt labmates were persecuting him. On 31 October last year, Qi claimed that colleagues were saying he was ‘lazy’ and that he was trying to prove them wrong by working hard. ‘I judge their motivation is only to tell my [principal investigator] then control, me by tale telling,’ he added, noting that his PI told him nobody was talking about him. Just two months earlier, Qi posted that his PI ‘should have more experience to handle with these girls and tattletales’. Qi had also referred to a woman who ‘shows her “best” to beg others to “help” me’ , and then complained that this made ‘all people then look down on me. Kind of angelic bitch’.

Being overextended in the lab seems to have been another problem for Qi. In November, he complained about working more than 60 hours a week and feeling tired . ‘I spend too much time to persuade myself that I work just out of interests instead of to show others I am working,’ he added.

Community in mourning

‘This loss is devastating, and this shooting damages the trust and safety that we so often take for granted in our campus community,’ stated UNC Chapel Hill chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz. ‘We will work to rebuild that sense of trust and safety within the community,’ he added. Classes remain cancelled until the end of 30 August.

During the campus lockdown, Holden Thorp – a chemistry professor at George Washington University in Washington, DC, a former chancellor of UNC Chapel Hill and current editor-in-chief of Science  – posted to X : ‘So devastated by what has happened in Chapel Hill and in my departmental home starting when I was 18 years old.’ He earned a chemistry degree from UNC in 1986.

So devastated by what has happened in Chapel Hill and in my departmental home starting when I was 18 years old. Love to all. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️😢😢😢😢 — Holden Thorp, Science EIC (@hholdenthorp) August 28, 2023

The US anti-gun violence advocacy group Students Demand Action also spoke out on social media about the shooting. ‘Dr. Zijie Yan was shot and killed at UNC Chapel Hill yesterday, just days into the fall semester. He had been an associate professor in the university’s Applied Physical Sciences department since 2019,’ the organisation wrote on X . ‘Our nation’s gun violence crisis is NOT inevitable. Dr. Yan should still be alive.’

This is back-to-school season in America, but it doesn’t have to be. Our nation’s gun violence crisis is NOT inevitable. Dr. Yan should still be alive. https://t.co/k9jg5gjlEf — Students Demand Action (@StudentsDemand) August 29, 2023

This is not the first such case in the US. In October 2022, a former graduate student at the University of Arizona, Murad Dervish, was charged with shooting and killing the head of the university’s hydrology and atmospheric sciences department, Thomas Meixner. Dervish was reportedly expelled from Meixner’s department and prohibited from setting foot on the campus prior to the shooting. His trial is slated for September.

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News | University of North Carolina graduate student…

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News | University of North Carolina graduate student charged in killing of faculty advisor denied bond

Hannah Schoenbaum/AP

Tailei Qi, the graduate student suspected in the fatal shooting of a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill faculty member, center, makes his first appearance at the Orange County Courthouse in Hillsborough, N.C., Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2023.

Tailei Qi, the graduate student suspected in the fatal shooting of a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill faculty member, center, makes his first appearance at the Orange County Courthouse in Hillsborough, N.C., Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2023. Qi has been charged by the UNC Police Department with first-degree murder and possession of a weapon on educational property, both felony charges.

Tailei Qi, 34, was charged Tuesday with first-degree murder and having a gun on educational property in Monday’s killing of Zijie Yan inside a science building at the state’s flagship public university.

Chapel Hill police arrested Qi without force in a residential neighborhood near campus within two hours of the attack, UNC Police Chief Brian James said at a news conference.

Investigators were trying to determine a motive and searching for the gun, James said. He declined to specify where in Caudill Labs Yan was killed, saying officers are still looking at evidence. Qi was already gone when a team of officers reached the building, James said.

Yan was “a beloved colleague, mentor and a friend of so many on our campus and a father to two young children,” UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz at the news conference.

On Wednesday, the school’s iconic Bell Tower will ring in honor of Yan’s memory and students are encouraged to take a moment of silence, he said. The school also canceled classes until Thursday.

Earlier Tuesday, Qi briefly appeared in Orange County Superior Court. Judge Sherri Murrell ordered Qi to remain jailed without bond and scheduled his next court date for Sept. 18. After the hearing, Qi bowed to his Mandarin interpreter, public defender Dana Graves and the guards who took him away in handcuffs.

Graves left court without talking to reporters and didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Yan was an associate professor in the Department of Applied Physical Sciences who had worked for the university since 2019, UNC said Tuesday. He led the Yan Research Group, which Qi joined last year, according to the group’s UNC webpage.

Yan was a respected and approachable professor and research adviser who was deeply knowledgeable about the field, said Wen Liu, a 2022 graduate who worked in the lab for three years.

He was somewhat reserved, yet always willing to answer questions with patience and respect and advise lab members who got stuck in their research, Liu said.

“For hours he would just be doing things and explaining along the way,” said Liu, who was a “newbie undergrad in the field” at the time and also worked with Qi in the lab. Qi seemed passionate about research, curious about others’ work and “pretty sociable,” Liu said.

The lab’s main goals were making and studying nanoparticles under the effect of light, using lasers, he said. The work has potential applications in medicine and other fields.

A since-deleted page on the school’s website listed Qi as a graduate student in Yan’s research group, with Yan as his adviser, though the police chief said their ties were still under investigation. Qi previously studied at Wuhan University in China before earning a masters in mechanical engineering at Louisiana State University in 2021.

The attack and hourslong lockdown terrified students and faculty who had returned last week for the start of the fall semester. On Tuesday, students pet therapy dogs on campus and chalked hearts, peace signs and messages of hope on walking paths.

Noel Harris, a senior journalism student, said she spent confusing and scary hours locked in a class reading news coverage, listening to police scanners and waiting for university updates about whether the danger had passed.

When an officer arrived, the class asked him to slide his badge under the door first, Harris said. The officer said they were safe but recommended they wait until an all-clear was issued. Soon after, Harris recorded video of people climbing out of an adjacent building’s windows, and she started to wonder “so is it really safe? What’s going on?” she said.

She said Tuesday that she was still trying to understand why the students left through the windows of Phillips Hall, where math and other classes are held but no shots were fired.

“I felt myself just being scared and shocked, but then not shocked at the same time because it’s like, this happens every day,” Harris said.

This story has been corrected to show the police chief’s last name is James, not Jones.

Robertson reported from Raleigh, North Carolina, and Rankin reported from Richmond, Virginia. Associated Press writers Jonathan Drew in Hillsborough, North Carolina, Sarah Brumfield in Silver Spring, Maryland, and Ben Finley in Norfolk, Virginia, contributed to this report.

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Nation | University of North Carolina graduate student…

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Nation | University of North Carolina graduate student charged in killing of faculty advisor denied bond

Authorities haven’t publicly speculated as to a motive for the attack..

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (AP) — Authorities charged a University of North Carolina graduate student Tuesday with first-degree murder in the fatal shooting of his faculty advisor, in an attack that caused a campus lockdown while police searched for the gunman.

During a brief hearing, Orange County Superior Court Judge Sherri Murrell ordered 34-year-old Tailei Qi to remain jailed without bond as an interpreter explained to Qi in Mandarin what was happening in the courtroom. She scheduled his next court date for Sept. 18.

Dana Graves, a public defender who represented Qi during the hearing, left the courtroom without talking to reporters.

Qi is charged with first-degree murder and having a 9mm handgun on educational property in the the Monday killing of Zijie Yan inside of a science building on UNC’s flagship campus in Chapel Hill. The attack led to a roughly three-hour lockdown of the campus, a week after students returned for the start of the fall semester.

Authorities haven’t publicly speculated as to a motive for the attack.

Yan was an associate professor in the Department of Applied Physical Sciences who had worked for the university since 2019, UNC said in a statement Tuesday, noting that it has been in contact with Yan’s family and is providing them with resources and support.

Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz said in a message to the UNC community that his team had met with Yan’s colleagues and family to express condolences on behalf of the campus.

“He was a beloved colleague, mentor and friend to many on our campus,” Guskiewicz said.

On Wednesday, the school’s iconic Bell Tower will ring in honor of Yan’s memory and students are encouraged to take a moment of silence, he wrote.

In a page that has been taken down since the attack, Qi was listed on the school’s website as a graduate student in Yan’s research group and Yan was listed as his adviser. He previously studied at Wuhan University in China before moving to the U.S. and earning a masters in mechanical engineering at Louisiana State University in 2021.

Qi, who lives in Chapel Hill, was arrested during a roughly three-hour lockdown that followed the shooting, authorities said at a Monday news conference.

“To actually have the suspect in custody gives us an opportunity to figure out the why and even the how, and also helps us to uncover a motive and really just why this happened today. Why today, why at all?” UNC Police Chief Brian James said. “And we want to learn from this incident and we will certainly work to do our best to ensure that this never happens again on the UNC campus.”

Campus police received a 911 call reporting shots fired at Caudill Labs just after 1 p.m. Monday, James said. An emergency alert was issued and sirens sounded two minutes later, starting a lockdown that led frightened students and faculty to barricade themselves inside dorm rooms, bathrooms, classrooms and other school facilities.

Officers arriving at the lab building found a faculty member who had been fatally shot, James said. Based on witness information, police took the suspect into custody just after 2:30 p.m., according to the chief.

Jones declined to elaborate on the arrest, but TV station WRAL reported that it took place in a residential neighborhood near campus.

The lockdown was lifted around 4:15 p.m.

“This loss is devastating, and the shooting damages the trust and safety that we so often take for granted in our campus community,” Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz said.

Yan led the Yan Research Group, which Qi joined last year, according to the group’s UNC webpage. He earned his PhD in materials engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York and previously worked as an assistant professor at Clarkson University.

Qi is a graduate student in the department of applied physical sciences who studies nanopartical synthesis and light-matter interaction. He moved to the U.S. from China after earning a bachelor’s degree in physics at Wuhan University, according to the UNC webpage for the Yan Research Group.

The shooting sparked fear at the state’s flagship public university, just a week after students returned for the start of the fall semester.

Clayton Ulm, 23, a graduate student, said he was in a class of about 50 to 70 people when they were told to go into lockdown. The alarm system had gone off, but screens in the classroom had also glared with the lockdown order.

“Then there was quite a bit of panic as students were trying to figure out what to do,” Ulm said in a LinkedIn message while still in the classroom, heading into his third hour of lockdown. “Then we all started hiding beneath our chairs and under desks. Some students went and locked the doors.”

Students started listening to police scanners to try to get information about where the shooter was, Ulm said. The panic eventually subsided. And people were allowed to use the nearby restrooms. Still, he called it “surreal seeing the mass panic.”

About two hours after the first alert went out, officers were still arriving in droves, with about 50 police vehicles at the scene and helicopters circling over the school.

It took about an hour and a half to lift the lockdown after the arrest because authorities were making sure they had the right suspect in custody, James said.

Police also had received calls around campus about other potential victims and gunshots that needed to be checked out, he said.

“We had to ensure that the entire campus was safe,” James said.

The university, with about 20,000 undergraduate students and 12,000 graduate students, canceled Tuesday classes.

Robertson reported from Raleigh, North Carolina, and Rankin reported from Richmond, Virginia. Associated Press writers Jonathan Drew in Hillsborough, North Carolina, Sarah Brumfield in Silver Spring, Maryland, and Ben Finley in Norfolk, Virginia, contributed to this report.

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NEWS... BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT

Physics PhD student from Wuhan ‘shot dead his faculty adviser at University of North Carolina’

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A physics PhD student has been arrested in the shooting death of a University of North Carolina faculty adviser .

Tailei Qi, an applied physics PhD student originally from Wuhan, China, was identified as the suspect by court documents and jail records.

Qi was arrested and charged with first-degree murder and bringing a gun into an educational facility. He is being held at the Orange County Detention Center.

Police have not determined a motive for the shooting that took place on Monday.

‘We certainly want the opportunity to interview the suspect,’ said UNC Police Chief Brian James. ‘To actually have the suspect in custody gives us an opportunity to figure out the why.’

A fellow graduate student in the program told WRAL that Qi was ‘was always very quiet’.

‘I would have never guessed that he would be the kind of person who could possibly be capable of this kind of thing,’ he told the local station.

Investigators are still searching for the weapon the suspect allegedly used for the shooting, which placed the entire Chapel Hill campus on lockdown for about three hours.

The victim was identified as UNC Professor Zijie Yan, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering. The shooting took place at the Caudill Labs building, where Yan’s office was located.

Yan was conducting research on optical trapping and manipulation, holography, microfluidics, electronic and photonics nanomaterials, according to his page on UNC Applied Physical Sciences department’s website .

Yan was also reportedly serving as a faculty advisor to Qi, and both men appeared as co-authors on at least two academic papers published between 2022 and 2023, both in the field of advanced optical materials.

Meanwhile, the Chapel Hill campus has begun to recover after the hours-long lockdown.

‘This loss is devastating and the shooting damages the trust and safety that we so often take for granted in our campus community,’ stated UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz.

The Caudill Labs building remains closed as the investigation continues in that area.

This is a developing news story, more to follow soon… Check back shortly for further updates.

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When Student-Adviser Tensions Erupt, the Results Can Be Fatal

By Dennis Overbye

• March 27, 2007

Being a graduate student is the most grueling and intense part of becoming a scientist, but it rarely leads to murder. Here are some rare instances.

Take the case of Theodore Streleski, a Stanford mathematician. In 1978 he bludgeoned his adviser, Karel deLeeuw, to death with a ball-peen hammer after being told that, after 19 years of graduate school, he wasn’t going to get his doctorate. Mr. Streleski received a sentence of seven years based on a defense of diminished capacity, according to newspaper accounts. He did not admit any remorse when he was freed, but said he didn’t have any plans to kill again.

In 1989, Jens P. Hansen, a graduate student at the University of Florida School of Medicine, went to the home of Arthur Kimura, his professor of pathology, and shot him. Dr. Kimura was the chairman of a committee that had just voted to terminate Mr. Hansen’s graduate study, after seven years, with a master’s degree. Mr. Hansen is serving a life sentence, according to a notice in The Florida Independent Alligator, a student newspaper.

In 1992, just a year after a shooting at the University of Iowa in which the gunman killed five people and himself, Frederick M. Davidson, an engineering student at San Diego State, began the defense of his master’s thesis by gunning down the three professors on his committee. He is serving three life sentences.

But having a doctorate does not confer immunity from academic rage. In 1992 Valery Fabrikant, an engineering professor, went on a shooting rampage at Concordia University in Montreal. He killed four of his colleagues, whom he blamed for his failure to get tenure and for trying to get him fired. Dr. Fabrikant is serving a life sentence and doing research from his cell. In a statement posted on a Web site, www.geocities.com/benny_patrick/new9.html?20072, in 2002, he wrote, “I hope to be remembered as a person who had enough courage to fight lawlessness with deadly force and I hope to encourage others to do the same.”

An article in Science Times on March 27 about graduate students who have killed their professors referred incorrectly to the case of Theodore Streleski, a Stanford University student who bludgeoned Karel deLeeuw, a Stanford math professor, to death. At the time of the killing, Mr. Streleski's academic adviser was Halsey Royden, not Dr. deLeeuw. Mr. Streleski was told by Dr. Royden that his research was sufficient to earn him a doctorate if he wrote a dissertation; Mr. Streleski was not told that after 19 years of graduate school he was not going to get a doctorate.

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Closing arguments set in trial of University of Arizona grad student accused of killing a professor

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TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Closing arguments are scheduled for Monday in the trial of a former University of Arizona graduate student accused of killing a professor on campus two years ago.

Murad Dervish, 48, faces seven felony charges including first degree murder in the death of Thomas Meixner, 52, who was shot nine times near his office and was pronounced dead at a Tucson hospital.

Defense attorney Leo Masursky told jurors that the killing wasn’t premeditated and that Dervish is “guilty except insane to second-degree murder,” an insanity defense.

Pima County prosecutors said Dervish planned the shooting and knew what he was doing.

Meixner headed the university’s Department of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences and was an expert on desert water issues.

Dervish was in the master’s degree program in atmospheric sciences, which is within the Department of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences.

Authorities said Dervish was banned from the school in January 2022 and later expelled for ongoing issues with professors after he received a bad grade.

According to a criminal complaint, a flyer with a photograph of Dervish had been circulated to university staff in February 2022 with instructions to call 911 if he ever entered the John W. Harshbarger Building, which houses the hydrology department.

The complaint also said Dervish was barred from being on school property and he had been the subject of several reports of harassment and threats to staff members working at Harshbarger.

Witnesses said Dervish was wearing a surgical mask and baseball cap as a disguise when he showed up outside Meixner’s office on the afternoon of Oct. 5, 2022, and shot the professor.

Dervish was arrested after Arizona state troopers stopped his car on a highway more than 120 miles (193 kilometers) northwest of Tucson.

Authorities said a loaded 9 mm handgun was found in the vehicle and that the ammunition was consistent with the shell casings found at the shooting scene.

Withrow High School to offer students counseling after recent graduate was fatally shot

W ithrow University High School students will have access to counseling services Monday after a graduate was shot and killed the night of commencement.

Lamon Wiggins, 18, died early Saturday after he was found shot in the 2300 block of Dana Avenue in Hyde Park, just around the corner from Withrow . He was pronounced dead after arriving at University of Cincinnati Medical Center.

Wiggins had just received his diploma at Friday's graduation ceremony.

Start the day smarter. Get all the news you need in your inbox each morning.

"Cincinnati Public Schools mourns the death of a Withrow University High School graduate, Lamon Wiggins," a statement provided by Cincinnati Public Schools reads. "We recognize this tragic event and our sympathy and support remains with the family, friends and school community."

The district's Crisis Response Team will be at the school Monday to provide continued support. CPS will also cooperate with the Cincinnati Police Department throughout its investigation, the district said.

Before the shooting, police said that there was a gathering of around 50 people from Friday night into the early hours of Saturday morning.

Cincinnati police are continuing to investigate. They have also not identified a suspect nor made any arrests.

Anyone with information is asked to call homicide detectives at 513-352-3040.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Withrow High School to offer students counseling after recent graduate was fatally shot

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Duke CS PhD and Amazon Technical Advisor Laura Grit’s Nontraditional Career Journey

• Share This: Share Duke CS PhD and Amazon Technical Advisor Laura Grit’s Nontraditional Career Journey on Facebook Share Duke CS PhD and Amazon Technical Advisor Laura Grit’s Nontraditional Career Journey on LinkedIn Share Duke CS PhD and Amazon Technical Advisor Laura Grit’s Nontraditional Career Journey on X

Written by Laura Grit for Life at AWS . Adapted title and description from Duke Department of Computer Science News .

In 2021, I was promoted to distinguished engineer, one of the highest technical leadership positions at Amazon Web Services (AWS). Now, as I embark on a new career milestone as the technical advisor to AWS CEO Adam Selipsky, the Life at AWS team has asked me to reflect on how I started at Amazon and what brought me to this point in my career.

My Amazon career has taken a nontraditional path. Most

people, after getting PhDs in Computer Science, start in software developer or scientist roles. Instead, I started as a technical program manager (TPM). I found I loved the intersection of solving technical problems while working across many teams and organizations to deliver for our customers.

A TPM is an individual contributor role, which is what Amazon calls employees who do not manage people. Without direct manager authority, we need to influence through others in order to deliver on programs. We have an expert view on how our technology and businesses intersect. We get to see where there could be gaps in the approach we’re taking, and as a result, we help improve what our engineers are building for our customers.

At Amazon, teams are decentralized and empowered to make decisions by leveraging  Amazon’s Leadership Principles . This empowers our teams to be agile in responding to the needs of our customers without requiring excessive coordination. As a TPM who needed to work across tens to hundreds of these teams, each making their own decisions, I had to depend on the Amazon Leadership Principles of Dive Deep and Earn Trust to understand the technical needs across many services and to influence prioritization.

The post  Duke CS PhD and Amazon Technical Advisor Laura Grit’s Nontraditional Career Journey appeared first on  Life at AWS .

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Graduate Profile: Hongmin Ahn, MTS '24

Message of Thanks  

I would not be where I am today without the unwavering support of my family and their endless love. In addition, I have been blessed by the support of this community of people over the last two years at HDS. 

I first would like to express my deepest gratitude to my academic advisor, Professor Janet Gyatso, for her profound mentorship and support. You exemplified to me how to navigate through the complexities of scholarship with wisdom and grace. My special thanks extend to Professor James Robson for his generosity in providing me with a Reading and Research class despite his extremely tight schedule. You showed me how one professor's leadership could bring such a transformative impact on not just a student but an institution. 

Professor Ryuichi Abe, words cannot adequately express how indebted I am to you for your boundless trust in my potential and for providing me with an opportunity to serve as a teaching fellow for your class. Your warm words of encouragement after my PhD rejection have been the guiding light in the dark sea of suffering. Thanks to you, I'm dreaming again, and I'm dreaming higher. 

Their collective advisorship allowed me to reach new heights in both scholarship and personal growth. I am incredibly proud to be their advisee. 

I also sincerely appreciate the friendship that I formed with the students of Regional Studies of East Asia (RSEA). For all of you who are graduating with me, thank you for taking me as an honorary RSEA member. I found the community I truly belonged to, and I will forever cherish every single second of laughter and tears I shared with you. 

Randy, thank you for being the best boss in the world. 

Lastly, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my roommate and friend Kent Zheng (a student of RSEA '24 and incoming PhD at Harvard EALC), who has shown me the true meaning of scholarship and friendship over the past six years since our time together in college. Your unwavering dedication to academic excellence and genuine kindness and warmth have been the greatest form of academic and emotional support I always relied on. I am deeply thankful for your companionship and indelible impact on my academic and personal journey. 

I am grateful that this wonderful community that I loved also loved me. 

Future Plans 

I plan to study Japanese at Inter-University Center in Yokohama for one year. I hope to come back next year for the doctoral program. 

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