New Ride + Road Trip = New Life @ Midland

It's still the non-typical midwestern march weather, going up and down from 20s to 30s, an inch of snow or two. I am relocated to where my job is, Midland, michigan. To save some breath explaining where this little town of ~60k population is, here is the link. Yali and I started out from st louis, missouri in the morning. We were pretty at leisure the whole trip, even visited the Indiana dunes state park. Although the michigan lake was still all frozen and covered by snow. The first day evening we arrived at Ann Arbor, MI, the college town where U. of Michigan is located. It was about 10 O'clock in the evening, we were lucky enough to find a restaurant opened that late on the main street, the mongolian barbecue. The next day, we walked around ann arbor. Basically, its a pretty neat town, very similar to madison, WI, except without lakes. The Main street, Liberty street and the State street are the main business districts next to the campus. It was a very cold day. Yali and I managed to took a handful of photos of the campus. Due to the extreme weather condition, some pics of her are too twisted to shown. Overall, the campus of the U. of Michigan is very compact, with a large number of buildings densely populated. There are 5 or 6 chinese restaurant, we went to one of them called Jing Hua Xiao Lou for lunch. The food tastes OK, comparable to the quality in urbana, IL.

We left Ann arbor and hit an outlet shopping mall in Howell, 30 mins north of Ann arbor. On our way out to Midland, we were caught by a big snow. Oh, hey, in case you guys didn't see the picture above. It's my new vehicle, the 2009 (yes, 9) Subaru Forester. It's redesigned model. I was the first batch of people who bought it. The SUV has an electronic stability control, in combination with its famous all-wheel-drive technology, making it super stable in condition like snow and rain.

After moving into my new apartment in midland, We drove off to see the shoreline of the Lake Huron, which is within 1 hr from midland. Below is a pic of Yali's twisted face due to the harsh weather and the beautiful scene behind her.

Surface contraction work is covered by press

The surface contraction work, a collective result among Jim, Ruoshi, Dr. Tao, Dr. Menards, Prof. Nuzzo and me, has been selected as the cover for the April issue of Nature Materials, a premier journal in materials science. The work is also recently covered by the Illinois News. Check it out. For those of you who are curious why these photos are always shooted from top down, I have answer. The photographer who took my picture told me secretly: "Professors are typically old and fat, shooting the picture from the top would make them look better in the picture".

Science v.s. Engineering

John Rogers, a professor of Materials Science in Illinois, had gave a talk on how he spinned off a company from his research. At the end of the talk, he concluded with his favorite quote regarding science and engineering. It's from the famous scientist and engineer Theodore von Kármán:

Scientists discover the world that already exists;
Engineers create a world that has never been there.

Something to think about.

Graduation

If there are a few moments in my life when I can't help crying and hard to forget. This must be one of them. On March 14th, I said "good bye" to my group members and my advisor, Jim. This moment marks a point where I finally head out the ivory tower and walk into the real world. Yes, I graduate with my Ph.D. finally!

It's not an award or anything worth bragging, but finishing my degree reminds me of the oscar. Every time an award winner walk onto the podium and have to say something, he or she typically starts with "I want to thank...". I always thought it's a routine thing, hardly from the heart. It turns out, I was wrong.

I experienced such a moment last week, when I finished the defense and finally deposited my thesis. The format-checking guy in the thesis office put a stamp on my thesis, and said to me: "congratulation, you are a doctor now!" I walked out of the office, unreacted, but when I walked outside,
and saw a bunch of undergrads on the quad, I felt something profound has happened in my heart. I realized, I am not longer a student. From the elementary school to graduate school, I have always been a student. It's like I have been a student for my whole life. It doesn't feel good when someone strip the right off me in a sudden.

Being at school it's not an easy task, to many people. I am one of those lucky guys who can survive, or even kind of enjoy school for such an extended period of time. Not because I am smart. Some people still consider us a loser for getting a phd. I am just an average person. It's because, and now I know that, I have never been alone. There are always people who love me, support me and are willing to help me. My parents, my sister, my girlfriend are people who are always there when I need them. My advisor, Jim, has been the best teacher I have ever met. I learned tremendously from the members in my group, and from the great staff in the MRL. These people have shaped me, and I owe who I am to all of them. I now understand that those oscar winners might not be pretending to thank somebodies. It's simply an impluse from everyone's soul that, when you have achieved something great, you think of those who made this possible.

I am going to open a new chapter in my life. I hope my blog can be updated more regularly and more frequently, so that you, the invisible readers, can see how I evolve, and witness the ups and downs in my life. Do leave a comment if you are there. Don't you hate being invisible all the time:)

Brat Pete on Bianchi

In his interview with Larry King, the CNN famous anchor, Brat Pete rode a cruiser bicycle in New Orleans. Now he is caught riding a Bianchi road bike with a suit. I don't the source of this picture, but it's kind of funny.

Paper Acceptance and Job Rejections

There is no free lunch in the world. Good things are always accompanied by bad crap. My nature materials paper on surface contraction is finally accepted. The paper had began at the end of 2006. So it's been through a whole year of struggling to end up in somewhere. I have given up thinking on how important my work is. Time has made me feel bad. When Jim forwarded me the acceptance email from nature materials editorial, I was calm and at peace. I've been through enough to not make a big deal out of it. Challenges after challenges are waiting to me, I have to learn to move on wisely. Meanwhile, the two companies that I have interviewed with, the Shell Oil and the Praxair, both rejected me after a few months of reviewing me. I understood the economy is tough and getting into a recession. Praxair is not doing well this year. Pinggui told me that some people even have to be laid off. I can't complaint about my misfortune with shell. Thing just doesn't click. Working in the energy industry is what I always want to do. Hopefully, in Dow I will contribute my part to develope some new catalyst to save more energy.

Boston-MRS meeting 2007

I went to boston after the thanksgiving break to attend the MRS fall meeting. It's a big meeting in the field of materials science. Steven Chu, the nobel prize laureate in physics, gave an invited talk on the energy problem in the meeting.

My heart, however, was flying outside the conference. With a job-offer in hand, I felt zero pressure at the time. Teaming up with my fellow co-worker, Jiong, we ate in and out of Boston. It's my second time here to Boston. The first was with my parents. This time, I was mainly lodging in the culture district of city, near the manchester avenue and the convention center. To my pleasure, Boston is a very walkable city, unlike many cities in america (chicago, st louis, LA). Streets in Boston are clean, safe to walk on, and nice to look at. Boutique stores are around the corners, snobbish dressing pedestrians are walking around and the whole air brought me back to the 18th century colonial time.

Charlestown is my favorite town, next to the Anapolis, maryland in my list. The town sports two-story colonial houses everywhere. You walk here, you go back in time. The end of november was a little bit chilly in boston. But touring among the stone-paved streets made me feel warm.

I had a final round interview with Infinium lined up in the beginning of december. I decided not to go. So far, finance is not my cup of tea. We will see.

December begins my thesis writing. I also resubmitted my nature materials paper after 3 months of pause.