UNC Shooting victim, Zijie Yan, identified as suspect's academic adviser

Professor Zijie Yan was identified as the faculty victim in a deadly shooting that sent the UNC-Chapel Hill campus into lockdown on Monday. He was the academic adviser of suspect Tailei Qi, according to a university web page. Yan was an associate professor in the department of applied physical sciences, where he focused on nanoscience technology. Qi, a second-year doctoral student who was taken into custody after Monday’s shooting, worked closely with Yan’s research group at UNC since early 2022. Police said the incident happened in a lab on campus. Yan and Qi co-authored research papers in recent years on the effect of light on nanoparticles. Yan’s recent work focused on something called “optical tweezers,” a process using light aimed at developing advanced nanorobots within cells, according to an article on the applied physical sciences department’s website. Yan joined the faculty at UNC in 2019 after stints as an assistant professor at Clarkson University and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago, according to a university bio. He earned his PhD in materials engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.

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