On Thursday afternoon at 3 p.m., UNC students around Caudill Labs stepped out of the building or walked into nearby ones as they changed classes. Some stopped and joined a semi-circle of their peers, faculty and university leaders outside to listen to some speakers — who were there memorializing a person as a way to move on from a tragedy two years earlier.
The afternoon of Aug. 28, 2023, students were sheltering in place on campus as law enforcement searched for a suspect who shot and killed associate professor and researcher Zijie Yan in Caudill Labs. University leaders held Thursday’s event to remember Yan, honor the legacy of his researcher and share ways he impacted individuals.
Programs for the memorial event and bench dedication honoring slain UNC associate professor Zijie Yan lay next to white flowers. (Photo by Brighton McConnell/Chapel Hill Media Group.)
UNC Chancellor Lee Roberts speaks to the crowd at the two-year anniversary memorial for Zijie Yan on Thursday, Aug. 28. Chair of the Applied Physical Sciences Department Theo Dingemans stands nearby. (Photo by Brighton McConnell/Chapel Hill Media Group.)
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Rich Superfine said at one point during his remarks while choking up with emotion. As a distinguished professor in the Applied Physical Sciences department, he helped recruit Yan to come to UNC in 2019. And as he processed his grief over the shooting and Yan’s death, Superfine’s instinct as an amateur woodworker was to build a totem.
“In one way it feels futile, as if optics can address a loss so profound,” he said Thursday. “But what else can we do? When there is no sense, we need to create meaning. And so came the idea of three benches: one for Carolina, one for Zijie’s family in Apex, one for his parents in Hubei, China.”
The professor teamed up with the Carolina Tree Heritage Program to find wood that came from campus, with the group choosing a post oak tree felled from McCorkle Place in 2018 and preserved through the program. The pick felt fitting, Superfine said, considering the tree was more than 250 years old before it was cut down after catching a disease and becoming a safety risk.
“Our tree was, in human years, a young adult,” said Superfine, comparing its story to Yan’s. “It is said that oaks grow for 300 years, live for 300 years, and die for 300 years. Alas, our great tree was a comparative youngster when cut down — but it saw great things.”
Both the bench and plaque, designed by Yan’s APS department colleagues, sit outside Caudill Labs close to his old first-floor office that looks out over the scene. In the two years since, Yan’s peers have worked through their own grief of seeing the scene in Caudill Labs, talking with Yan minutes before the shooting and reflecting on their relationship with him. Gradually, they returned to their own research and found ways to help the lab’s graduate students.
Campus community members lined up to pay their respects and put white flowers on the new bench outside of Yan’s office at Caudill Labs. (Photo by Brighton McConnell/Chapel Hill Media Group.)
The memorial plaque for Zijie Yan is in both English and his native Chinese, and features a design inspired by Yan’s research of the micro scale. While the accuracy of the Chinese translation was called into question online before Thursday’s event, UNC said a permanent version of the memorial is “under fabrication.” (Photo by Brighton McConnell/Chapel Hill Media Group.)
Chair of Applied Physical Sciences Theo Dingemans said Thursday it has become easier to talk about Yan, in part because he chooses to remember “the joy he brought to the department” while celebrating Yan’s life. He said it was heartwarming to see the turnout for the event, while describing the slain professor as “a devoted teacher and a generous colleague.”
“In our department,” Dingemans told the crowd, “Zijie was deeply respected not only for his groundbreaking research in nanotechnology, but also for the way he inspired his students and colleagues to think boldly. Zijie was also known for his kindness, his wonderful sense of humor, he was a great listener, and he was dedicated to mentoring the next generation of young scientists.
“While his life was tragically cut short, he had a profound impact on this university, his field and all of us who knew him,” the department chair added.
Part of Thursday’s recognition of Yan was the inaugural lecture given in his honor, which his mentor at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Douglas Chrisey conducted. Chrisey — who now holds the Jung Chair of Materials Engineering in the Department of Physics at Tulane — delivered a discussion on Yan’s speciality of research working with light. Working on the smallest of scales, the scientist would manipulate atoms with lasers with the goal of seeing whether “nanostructure materials” could be used as a method for health and energy innovation.
Doug Chrisey lays a white flower on the memorial bench dedicated in Zijie Yan’s honor. Chrisey mentored Yan and remained close even after Yan finished his PhD program. (Photo by Brighton McConnell/Chapel Hill Media Group.)
Doug Chrisey speaks to those gathered for the Inaugural Prof. Zijie Yan Memorial Lecture in Dey Hall on Thursday afternoon. Chrisey detailed both his and Yan’s research, which focus on using light to develop nanotechnology. (Photo by Brighton McConnell/Chapel Hill Media Group.)
Despite his life having ended, Yan’s work continues. All but one of his graduate students working in the lab have since advanced in their post-grad work. While much his lab’s equipment has been redistributed to help other faculty members, Dingemans said one of the machines most specific to Yan’s work remains in a secure location — and available for researchers conducting similar nanoscale experiments.
UNC Chancellor Lee Roberts also spoke at the ceremony at the memorial bench and plaque before laying down a white flower. Having been selected as interim chancellor four months after the shooting, he did not fully feel the incident’s impact on the campus community that August. But Roberts said from his administration working through the recovery, he is able to see a silver lining from the tragedy.
“[It has] reinforced the bonds that tie us together as a community…a community of scientists of educators of learners,” said the chancellor. “I think the memorial will, hopefully, serve as a fitting reminder of not just what holds our community together, but a place where [it] can come together to reflect. In that way, it would be fitting if this memorial and Dr. Yan’s memory did physically bring us closer together as well as spiritually.”
Thursday’s event did just that, with a line of attendees snaking through the courtyard beside Caudill Labs. Even after the ceremony and lecture finished, many UNC students who passed by the bench and plaque — some of whom may not have known Yan’s story before — stopped to read their inscriptions.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill dedicates this memorial in honor of Dr. Zijie Yan, a brilliant scholar and a loving soul. Zijie, an Associate Professor of Applied Physical Sciences, was shot and killed in Caudill Labs on August 28, 2023.
Zijie leaves behind a wife, parents, two young daughters, and a community of scholars in whose hearts his light will always shine.
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