Dr. Peidong Yang graduated from USTC in 1993 with the highest academic honor—Guo Moruo Prize, in addition to the Zhang, Zongzhi prize and merit scholarships. His academic and research career has been relatively short, yet his accomplishments to date are outstanding by any criteria: it took him only four years to fulfill his Ph.D. studies at Harvard University and two years of postdoctoral research at the University of California, Santa Barbara, before he became an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1999. Dr. Yang has received numerous awards as a faculty member at Berkeley, including the highly regarded Alfred P. Sloan fellowship, Hellman Award, ExxonMobil Solid State Chemistry Award, NSF CAREER award and Research Innovation Award in the year 2001 alone.He was also a recipient of the "Chinese Outstanding Oversea Scholar Award", and 3M untenured faculty award in 2000, as well as the Dreyfus New Faculty Award in 1999.

Dr. Yang has an unparalleled publication record: at least 8 papers in the most prestigious Science or Nature, and numerous articles in top-notch journals such as Journal of American Chemical Society, Advanced Materials, etc.He is also very inventive, having at least 6 pending patent applications and having obtained at least 3 patents to date.He has been invited to present his work by many U.S. as well as international research institutes.

USTC Alumni Foundation conducts alumni interviews for all of us to exchange ideas on how to build USTC into a world-class institution, and to help ourselves excel at our chosen professions. As such, USTCAF doesn't necessarily endorse all statements made during the interviews.

Interview with Dr. Peidong Yang

--by Xuqiong Wu (October 2001)

[Note: for a variety of reasons and excuses, this interview was conducted in a written communication manner.]

XW: If I am not mistaken, you must have secured a faculty position at Cal before you reached 30 years old (maybe you are yet to be 30 years old, given that you were in the entering class of 1988). What do you think were/are the important factors that have led to your success?

Dr. Yang: I got this job at age of 28. I think there are couple of important factors: 1. hard work, 2. critical thinking and smart ideas, 3. persistence and determination.

XW: Have you always been sure about becoming a professor and academic researcher, since many people have had second thoughts?

Dr. Yang: With the encouragement of colleagues, I have been very much on track in academic career development, and I have not really had the opportunity to have second thoughts. It has been fairly smooth, career-wise, for me, from graduate student to postdoc to faculty appointment.

XW: You pretty much graduated summa cum laude from USTC (GUO Moruo Scholarship). How would you value your USTC experience? Were you involved in some extracurricular activities while at USTC?

Dr. Yang: I valued my USTC experience very much. It was the place where I developed my thinking and interest. It was also the place that I decided moving into materials chemistry field. I should thank my undergraduate advisors there Prof. Qian Yitai and Prof. Chen Zuyao who introduced me into this fascinating field, which I have been actively researching on for the past 8 years.

XW: Please describe your field of research, preferably in layman terms.

Dr. Yang: "Small is beautiful" covers fairly well on what we are interested and working on. My research program has been focused on general synthesis, assembly, novel physical properties and device applications based on nanowire---one type of 1-dimensional nanostructures. We are trying to lay the foundation for future nanotechnology using nanowires as building blocks. We are interested in developing chemistry to making these tiny structures, assembling them, probing and using them.

XW: To my knowledge, your research is generally in the field of nanotechnology. Are you more focused on the fundamental physics and chemistry side or the application side? Nanotechnology seems to find applications in a variety of fields. I have seen quite a lot in biotechnology. China also attracted some western-trained researchers to set up projects in universities or industry. Can you, an expert in the field, give us some hints as to where the field is generally going? What are the immediate applications that can benefit daily lives? What are the future promises? Where does China stand in the world in terms of the advancements in this field?

Dr. Yang: We are very much focusing on the fundamental side of the research, although some of our effort has also been directed to application side like the device fabrication.

Nanotechnology will have significant impact in much of our daily life within next few decades, including computers, optical communications, data storage, drug delivery, genomics and many others. We are in fact already seeing many of these evolutionary changes in our daily life, while I am pretty sure in several fields revolutionary breakthrough will come along with research efforts from many labs including ours. I am very glad to see our government is putting tremendous efforts and funding support in this nanoscience area, which, I believe, is extremely wise decision. The future belongs to nanotechnology. I have very close interactions with several research labs back in China; they are all doing great jobs. The nano-research in China is making significant advancement in the synthetic area, but somehow is lagging behind in the characterization part, due partly lacking of well-operated research infrastructure.

XW: Do you have/plan to collaborate with research groups in USTC? Have you visited any Chinese institution recently? Does any have the caliber to collaborate with research groups at Cal or other preeminent research institutes in the world?

Dr. Yang: Yes, I have such plan. I already had lots of interactions with labs at Tsinghua and Fudan. These research groups are excellent; some of their work is world class. I will do my best to promoting nanoscience in China and helping out if necessary.

XW: What do you think of USTC? How do you think, as alumni, we can help USTC? What would you describe as the goal(s) of helping USTC? How do you view the rankings published by different agencies: the official one based on research publications, the one on CNN Asia website, or the more and more popular one at netbig(spelling? Wang3 Da4).com?

Dr. Yang: I have not tracked down these rating recently. I believe only way to improve the impact a university is to improve its scientific research impact by publishing more high quality papers. In my mind, USTC should be targeting "high quality" rather than "high quantity" both in term of research papers and the research programs, you know, the MIT type. I may go back visiting USTC next summer, I will learn more then. As an alumnus in the academia, I will do my best to promote USTC by establishing more interactions with USTC research groups and training more high-caliber graduate students from USTC.

XW: A very recent story that you may have heard about: a high school graduate from Sichuan received high scores in the College Entrance Exam, likely admitted to USTC's computer science department, yet could not afford a college education. Luckily, his story was published in a newspaper, which was quickly spread around the world via internet. Our Alumni Foundation solicited donations immediately and had such an overwhelming response that we had to conduct a lottery to decide who would sponsor this student's education at USTC. Of course I am very proud of what AF did in this case, as well as in many other areas. What do you think? (Or maybe I should ask first: are you in any way involved with USTC AF? Would you like to be involved?) How should we improve ourselves? Any program(s) that AF sponsors that you like/support (af.ustc.edu)?

Dr. Yang: I am not personally involved in this program, but would like to learn more about this program and be involved. I am very glad we have got another bright student. My personal opinion is that the USTC AF fellowship should be based on merit rather than financial needs.

XW: If possible, please share some insights with our young readers regarding how to pursue a career in academic research.

Dr. Yang: There is really no much to share in this other than that one has to be determined to do something, no matter what he is working on and how difficult it is.

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