Chapter 464: You chose the most difficult path again

The next day.

They originally said they would get up early, but the two of them dawdled until 10:30 before going out.

Song Yao had to go to Professor Morton's side to check the work of these days and prepare to start the busy life of the next stage.

Xu Qingzhou went straight to the MIT library. The project direction was determined, which was only the first step of the Long March. The preparation work for the next project was quite a lot.

First of all, the interdisciplinary nature and engineering needs of superconducting thin film preparation definitely couldn't be done alone like before; a professional experimental team must be formed.

This thing was more troublesome, and in Xu Qingzhou's view, it was even more troublesome than the experiment itself. After all, a team needed to be run-in, and a qualified team could determine the success or failure of the project.

In addition, before starting to draft the project application, he also had to collect materials on the preparation of high-quality superconducting thin films.

"Oxide Molecular Beam Epitaxy (OMBE) Technology," which tells about the lattice regulation and strain engineering of self-supporting nickel-based superconducting thin films, and "Superconducting Film Preparation and Application," which is about the preparation of large-area YBCO thin films by Metal-Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition (MOCVD).

Besides that, he also searched for a large amount of materials in top journals like Nature Materials, Advanced Materials, etc., in order to understand the latest research results in this field, and also the mainstream research directions of everyone.

Thus, the whole morning was spent searching for materials.

At 1:30 PM, Xu Qingzhou casually gnawed on a pizza, packed his things, and went to find Professor Roberts first.

The complex analysis course he taught ended at the end of June, and the remaining exams and such were all handled by Horn.

Today was mainly to visit.

Only Professor Roberts and Horn were in the office.

He really came at the right time; the office was filled with the faint fragrance of coffee.

Professor Roberts and their project were in the stage of graph embedding fusion, roughly constructing a user-item bipartite graph, applying node2vec to generate 128-dimensional embeddings, and finally designing a joint training framework of matrix factorization + graph neural network.

Next was the year-long engineering landing work.

"Xu, this is?"

Professor Roberts was worthy of being a mathematician; he quickly noticed the ring on Xu Qingzhou's hand.

Xu Qingzhou didn't hide it, saying: "As you can see, I'm married. To be precise, I've obtained a marriage certificate with my wife, and we'll hold the wedding in a few years."

"Married? Oh, Xu, congratulations!"

Horn congratulated him, handed Xu Qingzhou coffee, and sighed: "You proved with facts that beautiful love exists."

Professor Roberts drank coffee: "Of course it exists. Love is like a transcendental equation; the solution is outside of logic, but it draws the most beautiful curve in the universe. And my wife and I... we are like intersecting lines in projective geometry, extending separately but forever entangled on the horizon."

Xu Qingzhou laughed, not seeing that the little old man had such an idealistic and romantic side.

Everyone chatted for a while about love, and then it was on to work.

"Xu, have you considered joining our team?" Horn asked expectantly.

"I came today just to talk about this matter."

Xu Qingzhou said apologetically: "I plan to try things in condensed matter physics, quantum chips, high-quality preparation of first-layer superconducting metal thin films."

"This..."

"Xu, from number theory to condensed matter... and it's also chip research that deeply intersects with material science... have you really considered it clearly?"

Horn frowned and said.

Xu Qingzhou nodded with a smile, answering yes.

Professor Roberts said in a deep voice: "Princeton's Department of Materials Science also has relevant projects, using molecular beam epitaxy, with the goal of optimizing the interface flatness of single-crystal thin films..."

"Professor, do you also know the news in the physics field?" Horn was surprised.

Professor Roberts sipped coffee and said: "There is an old guy... the one you met last time, Yulin Luo Sen, is in this team."

"Mr. Luo Sen... benefited a lot from the exchange last time." Horn sighed.

Yulin Luo Sen, Xu Qingzhou had also heard of him, a statistical mathematician, completely worthy of being a top expert in the field of statistics.

"Moreover, apart from Princeton, our school also likely has similar projects. Last year, James' team also developed low-temperature film formation technology based on chemical solution deposition (CSD)."

Horn: "You will face many powerful, no, terrible opponents in the condensed matter field... do you still plan to continue?"

"Of course, that's what makes it challenging."

Xu Qingzhou said affirmatively.

Professor Roberts and Horn looked at each other, both seeing the helplessness of the other, sighing at Xu Qingzhou's stubbornness. He paused and asked: "So... your team?"

"Currently... still stuck on the proposal." Xu Qingzhou coughed dryly.

"Xu, sincere advice, compared to doing superconducting thin films, doing a mathematics project is more realistic. I dare to guarantee that when the time comes, you just need to call out, and countless people will want to join your team."

Horn said seriously.

Xu Qingzhou himself specialized in mathematics, and could be said to be one of the hottest scholars in the world, Wolf Prize in Mathematics, Xia country's Chern Medal in Mathematics, and the Fields Medal he was about to get in August.

Many people would be interested in a project by such a mathematician.

But condensed matter...

Xu Qingzhou was completely a novice.

Not to mention that Princeton had a super-strong project team.

Even at MIT, Xu Qingzhou didn't seem to have any competitiveness.

Isn't this equivalent to a novice starting to play a peak game?

Everyone's time was limited, especially in such top institutions, wasting a few months was enough to let oneself open a gap with others. A slightly rational person probably wouldn't join in the fun with Xu Qingzhou.

"I also agree with Horn's point of view."

Professor Roberts said in a deep voice: "After all, this is your first project since becoming a professor. I believe many people are looking forward to it, expecting you to have new achievements."

Xu Qingzhou shrugged and said indifferently: "Just like that sentence, if Gao Si stares at complex numbers for too long, sonnets will appear in his eyes..."

Once, Gao Si studied number theory for many years, and later began to specialize in poetry.

He continued: "I also want to try new things."

Horn was silent for a while, and finally nodded: "Fine, although it looks very bold, you indeed have this qualification; strength and youth, you lack neither."

Seeing Xu Qingzhou insist, Professor Roberts and Horn no longer tried to persuade him. The topic of the three transitioned to their project, how to improve cluster utilization through Spark dynamic resource allocation, and using Intel MKL to accelerate BLAS operations.

At 5:00 PM, Xu Qingzhou said goodbye and left.

As he was leaving, Roberts asked with a smile: "Xu, any interest in bringing a few students?"

Xu Qingzhou shook his head slightly, "However, if the committee agrees, I plan to open a course."

After all, he took a salary of 500,000, so he couldn't just take the money for nothing.

Moreover, teaching was actually quite interesting; just treat it as relaxation.

"I think no school would refuse a request from a Fields Medal scholar to teach."

Professor Roberts nodded.

Xu Qingzhou left the office and didn't go back to the library, driving to the supermarket to buy some ingredients, planning to go home to cook.

Because they were still adjusting to the time difference, Song Yao didn't plan to work overtime these two days, returning early to rest.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 465 =====