Sail across the sea

Chapter 583: Life and Learning

In addition to a very clear research approach, Yu Guanqing also obtained a top-notch research team and extremely generous research funding.

In the team, Yu Guanqing discovered many familiar faces, as well as some people whose names he had heard of before, although he had never met them. They were all technical backbones in the chemical industry who, like himself, had left their original units to join the Canghai Research Institute.

At the first meeting, Yu Guanqing repeatedly bowed to the industry leaders in the team, claiming that he was not knowledgeable enough to take their positions and asked the experts to take charge.

As a result, the experts all smiled and said that they were getting old and their energy was waning, so they would trouble Xiao Yu to take on this responsibility. They said they would be at Xiao Yu's command at any time.

Everyone's smiles were so genuine, and in the subsequent cooperation, they really didn't cause any trouble for Yu Guanqing. This made Yu Guanqing deeply admire the clean and upright atmosphere of the research institute, which did not have the bad habits of seniority-based promotion and vying for fame and profit found in other units. It was truly a place to make contributions and achieve success.

Later, Yu Guanqing was joined by a couple named Yang Kai and Lin Ruoyi.

Yang Kai is a rising star in the field of computational chemistry in China, and is the most outstanding among his peers, without needing any embellishment. As a new method of chemical research, computational chemistry has already gained considerable influence in China, and anyone who follows the development of this discipline is familiar with the name Yang Kai.

As for Lin Ruoyi, when she introduced herself, she claimed to be a recent master's graduate from the Computer Science Department of Peking University, who had come to the research institute to help everyone write programs. Soon after, everyone learned of her other identity: the newlywed wife of Gao Fan, chairman of Canghai Chemical Group, and the current director of the research institute's computing center.

No wonder the research institute vacated a teaching building a while ago, completely renovating it from the roof to the basement, installing central air conditioning—a rarity in China—and then brought in two large cabinets—two IBM mid-range computers. The mystery is solved now; it was all prepared for the chairman's wife.

Most engineers were skeptical of the abilities of this young and beautiful director of the computing center. In their past workplaces, there had been wives of leaders like this, who usually served as deputies in some quiet department. Being able to avoid being arrogant or causing trouble for subordinates was already considered quite good; what kind of technical elites could you expect from them?
At the very least, when have you ever seen a director of a computing center with a full head of hair?

The discussions on this matter didn't reach Lin Ruoyi's ears immediately. After arriving at the research institute with Yang Kai, she directly joined the fluorochemical project team.

They selected several challenging research directions and listened to researchers explain their research ideas. Then, Yang Kai proposed models and algorithms based on these ideas, while Lin Ruoyi was responsible for modeling and calculating them on the computer.

Lin Ruoyi was not Yang Kai's student, but because of her relationship with Gao Fan and Gao Min, Lin Ruoyi and Yang Kai were considered relatives. She had been working with Yang Kai on computational chemistry since her undergraduate years, and her master's thesis was also on this topic.

As Yu Guanqing said, a good teacher produces outstanding students. After years of guidance from Yang Kai, and of course Gao Fan's teachings, Lin Ruoyi's expertise in constructing chemical models has reached a level that is truly masterful, and she has few rivals in the field of computational chemistry in China.

This could be considered a benefit of the times. In the early 90s, China was severely lacking in talent, especially in those who understood the forefront of international academia. As long as you worked diligently in a certain field for a few years, you could become a leader in that field. It was quite common for graduate students to talk to professors about cutting-edge academic topics in those days.

Once the first model simulation was completed, engineers conducted verification experiments based on the simulation results. The results were astonishing; the experimental data perfectly matched the simulation data, proving the correctness of computational chemistry methods. From then on, no one dared to underestimate Lin Ruoyi anymore, and they also developed a deep interest in computational chemistry methods.

Doing chemical research has always been a tough and risky job.

For example, to study the effect of a certain catalyst, you need to conduct a series of experiments, trying to change the catalytic temperature, catalytic pressure, and the amount of catalyst, etc. You need to do hundreds of experiments to fit the corresponding curve and finally find the optimal point from the curve.

During this process, you need to keep a close eye on the experimental equipment, record various data at any time, and guard against dangers such as fires and explosions caused by carelessness. Those who choose chemistry as a career must have a genuine love for this subject.

The emergence of computational chemistry has given chemical research a completely new paradigm. According to computational chemistry, matter is nothing more than molecular structures, and chemical reactions are energy relationships, such as bond dissociation energy, free radical formation energy, activation energy, etc., all of which can be modeled.

With a model, you can process it using a computer. Deterministic relationships can be calculated using functions, while probabilistic relationships can be simulated using stochastic methods. In a model, you can control any parameters you want, which is much more convenient than conducting actual experiments.

In the past, people only knew about this method and thought that it might be feasible in theory, but not necessarily effective in reality, because there are too many factors that affect chemical reactions. Can the model cover them all?
Now that they've seen the tangible results, everyone is convinced and has developed an appreciation for Lin Ruoyi.

Although they can't weld, they can make models.

Seeing that all the engineers in the room had affirmed Yang Kai and Lin Ruoyi's work, Gao Fan cleared his throat and said to everyone:
"Everyone, Professor Yang is absolutely right. Computational chemistry is a tool that everyone should master. The level of mastery may vary depending on individual circumstances. Of course, it's best if you can build your own models and programs."

"If you have difficulty building models or programs on your own, the computing center will provide assistance. However, this assistance is limited to modeling and algorithms. The computing center staff do not understand the chemical engineering principles, so you will have to provide those."

"What everyone needs to learn is to understand the basic principles of computational chemistry, know how to communicate with the people responsible for the calculations, clearly state their needs, and be able to understand the calculation results."

"The research institute will have many more research tasks to undertake in the future, and it will be difficult to complete these tasks if we rely solely on traditional research methods. This requires everyone to master new technologies and methods. We must have the spirit of learning and applying knowledge throughout our lives."

"Finally, Ruoyi is still young and lacks social experience. You are all seniors, so I hope you can care for her and be tolerant of her mistakes. Thank you all in advance."

(End of this chapter)