On August 29, 2023 local time, Qi Tailei (middle) appeared in court in Hillsborough, United States. Visual China Map

On August 28 (Monday), local time, one week after the semester started at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), gunshots were suddenly heard on the campus.

According to local media reports, campus police received a report at around 1:02 p.m. that a faculty member was shot and killed in Caudill Laboratory in the school's chemistry building. At present, the police have not released victim information. According to multiple insiders, the victim is Yan Zijie, an associate professor in the Department of Applied Physics of the school.

With the help of witnesses at the scene, the police quickly identified the suspect and arrested him. According to the suspect's photo released by the police, the man in the photo matches Qi Tailei, a doctoral student in the school's Department of Applied Physics. The police have not yet filed formal charges against him.

Yan Zijie is Qi Tailei’s instructor. According to current media reports, the shooting began with a "grievance" between the tutor and the student. The grudge turned into anger. In the end, the student fired several shots at his tutor in the laboratory, leading to tragedy.

Image source UNC

incident

At the time of the incident, a Chinese postdoctoral fellow at UNC was attending an academic seminar with about 100 people, and suddenly the school alarm sounded. The postdoctoral fellow told the China Science Daily: "The supervisor is about 40 years old, because the teacher-student relationship was not handled well, the students shot and killed the supervisor several times in the group meeting."

The victim, Yan Zijie. Picture source UNC official website

The victim, Yan Zijie, had rich academic experience. He graduated from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 2005 with two majors in materials science and engineering and computer science with a double bachelor's degree, and in 2007 with a master's degree in physical electronics. In 2011, he received a Ph.D. in materials engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the United States. After that, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago for 4 years, and served as an assistant professor at Clarkson University from 2015 to 2019.

According to the Google Scholar website, Yan Zijie’s h-index is 32 and he has been cited more than 3,000 times. In 2014 and 2015, he gave academic reports at Wuhan University, Zhejiang University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

After the incident, the UNC campus was blocked for three hours, and a large number of law enforcement and emergency vehicles lined up near the crime scene. There were about 50 police cars at the scene and multiple helicopters hovering over the school.

School Police Chief Brian James said no one else was killed or injured in the shooting. Even after the lockdown was lifted, the campus remained in a state of emergency, with students warned "to stay away from Caudill's lab", with many expressing their "fears" on social media.

University of North Carolina President Kevin M. Guskiewicz said: "The shooting destroyed the trust and safety of the campus that we took for granted, and we will work hard to rebuild this sense of trust and safety within the campus community." and classes on Tuesday were canceled.

Qi Tailei's Complaint

According to Qi Tailei’s LinkedIn information, he entered the School of Physical Science and Technology of Wuhan University in 2010 and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 2015. He worked as a researcher at the Suzhou Institute of Advanced Materials and a research assistant at the Southern University of Science and Technology. Studied as a graduate student in the School of Mechanical Engineering at Louisiana State University in the United States and obtained a master's degree in materials science in 2021.

In January 2022, Qi Tailei came to UNC to join Yan Zijie's laboratory. He is currently a second-year Ph.D. student and is engaged in research on nanoparticle synthesis and optical trapping.

Qi Tailei started using foreign social media in February 2022, and often posted life updates there. The latest one was posted on August 4. He retweeted a post about floods in Northeast China.

On August 1, he asked two consecutive questions on social media: "What is truth?" PhD student, interested in nanoparticle synthesis, optical trapping, self-assembly, spectroscopic analysis, and machine learning. I'm a bit silly in daily chores, but enthusiastic about research. Come to me if you're interested."

"China Science News" found that he often expressed some personal thoughts on social media, and some of his words revealed dissatisfaction.

Qi Tailei complained many times in August 2022, "In the United States, bullying seems to be a problem. People often don't stop them in the first place." "Just talk to my PI (Principal Investigator) and get him Just a commitment. He should have more experience dealing with these girls and the gossip."

He posted continuously on November 1, 2022, saying, "This group of people either say I'm lazy, or prove that I work hard, instead of telling me that they are trying to consume my privacy. I judge them just to tell my PI, Then control me by telling stories." "But the weird thing is, when I talked to the PI about it, he said no one told him about it. So it's just voyeurism from those people?"

Some of Qi Tailei’s social media updates.

Once "the pride of the village"

According to Google Scholar, Qi Tailei has published two results as the first author since joining Yan Zijie's lab, which were published in "Nano letters" (Nano letters, impact factor 12) and "Advanced Optical Materials" (Advanced Optical Materials). Optical Materials, impact factor around 10). The latter was published on July 30 this year. Qi Tailei's joy jumped out in the updates on social networking sites. He wrote: "I am very happy to share our new paper on optical combination."

According to media reports, Qi Tailei was born in Dasha Village, Fengqiu County, Henan Province. He studied in Fengqiu No. 1 Middle School in high school. After failing the college entrance examination in 2009, he repeated his studies at Puyang Youtian Middle School for a year. Qi Tailei also has a younger brother. Their parents make a living by farming, and their father suffers from liver disease, which puts a heavy financial burden on the family.

The two Qi Tailei brothers scored the same high score of 624 in 2010, and were admitted by the School of Physical Science and Technology of Wuhan University and the Department of Energy Power System and Automation of Xi'an Jiaotong University respectively. At that time, the story of these farm brothers being admitted to prestigious schools with the same score became a legend and attracted widespread attention.

After the shooting at UNC, China Science News tried to call the Dasha Village Residents Committee, but was unable to get through. Later, a staff member was contacted through the government affairs telephone of Juxiang Town. After communicating and confirming with the Dasha Village Neighborhood Committee, the staff member reported to the reporter that Qi Tailei's family had already moved out of Dasha Village.

Qi Tailei likes to climb mountains and hike. He claims to have won the 800-meter championship and sixth place in the 1,500-meter long-distance race. He also enjoys cooking and occasionally posts his delicious food on social media.

(Thanks to our reporter Liu Runan and Yi Rongrong, a visiting scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for their help)

Reference Information:

https://www.cbs17.com/news/local-news/orange-county-news/police-report-armed-dangerous-person-on-or-near-unc/

https://cedarnews.net/task/breakingnews/world-english/625594/tailei-qi/

https://www.wafb.com/2023/08/28/report-former-lsu-student-person-interest-unc-shooting/

https://redian.news/wxnews/558155