Lecture, memorial site dedication will honor Zijie Yan

Applied physical sciences professor Rich Superfine hopes that a lecture and the dedication of a memorial site designed for quiet reflection will help the campus community remember his late colleague, Zijie Yan.

Yan, an associate professor of applied physical sciences, died two years ago in a shooting at Caudill Labs.

The memorial site, including a bench and a plaque, will be dedicated at 3 p.m. Aug. 28 in the Caudill Labs courtyard near the archway that leads down the steps to South Road. It is being created from a 250-year-old campus post oak tree, a type of white oak. Chancellor Lee H. Roberts, College of Arts and Sciences Dean Jim White and Superfine will speak at the ceremony.

“Zijie loved learning, and I think he would love the idea of continuing his scholarship through having inspiring scientists come to campus,” said Superfine, the Taylor-Williams Distinguished Professor and former chair who hired Yan to the APS department in 2019. “I also think about sitting on that bench together with Zijie, what that would have been like, and how we would have talked about everything that tree saw during its time on campus.”

Superfine, who is a woodworker, and his APS colleagues completed the project together in concert with the Carolina Tree Heritage Program.

When trees present a safety hazard or are lost to storms, the program helps to transform the trunks and branches into furniture, sculptures and other wooden creations. Yan’s bench is being crafted from a tree that once stood behind Old West on the edge of McCorkle Place. It was cut down in 2018 due to disease when it became a safety risk.

APS associate professor Ronit Freeman worked on the design of the plaque that will be installed next to the bench. It will have a memorial inscription in both English and Mandarin and feature a graphic inspired by Yan’s research.

Volunteers will continue to create two more benches during the fall semester — one for Yan’s family in Chapel Hill and one for his parents in China.

Yan received a doctorate in materials engineering in 2011 from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, then served as an assistant professor at Clarkson University before joining the Chapel Hill faculty. Doug Chrisey, Yan’s doctoral adviser, will deliver the memorial lecture in his honor. He will discuss “The Photonic Processing of Materials — from Tissue Engineering to Nanoparticles” at 4:15 p.m. in Dey Hall’s Toy Lounge.

Chrisey, who today is the Jung chair and professor of materials engineering at Tulane University, said he continued to stay in touch with Yan over the years.

Chrisey said Yan was “especially productive” as a graduate student at Rensselaer. At Carolina, Yan’s research aimed to transcend the boundary between photonics and materials science. He envisioned a future in which light waves could be employed in biomedicine, using holographic “optical tweezers” to control and construct nanostructures within cells.

“He was on a really nice trajectory forward, so having lost that, you lose that legacy,” Chrisey said.

At the dedication ceremony, attendees will have a chance to place individual flowers on the bench as a way of remembering Yan.

“Zijie was such a kind, thoughtful, gracious person,” Superfine said. “He was a brilliant scholar and devoted classroom teacher. Those are the things that continue to inspire me as I move forward.”

Read more about the memorial.