I was a top student in America.

Chapter 108 I'm Not a PhD Student (Please Subscribe)

the next morning.

Following the address, Li Ao rode his bicycle to the renowned James Frank Institute (JFI) at the University of Chicago.

After parking his car downstairs at the lab building, he dialed Arjun Patel's number.

Arjun is a doctoral student in Professor Rudy's research group and one of the main leaders of this collaborative project.

Less than three minutes after hanging up the phone, a medium-sized Indian youth wearing a dark hoodie walked out of the building entrance.

He strode down the steps and waved to Li Ao with a distinct Indian accent.

"Bro, you must be Leo?"

Although it was their first meeting, Arjun's attitude was unusually familiar and enthusiastic: "Just call me Arjun, Bro. You're here quite early. Come on, let me take you upstairs to familiarize you with the environment and give you a brief overview of the current progress of our project."

"Thank you for your help, Ah-Qiong." Li Ao nodded in agreement and followed him into the building.

In fact, after receiving the reception assignment from Professor Rudy last night, Arjun keenly sensed the importance her mentor placed on this young man.

He had searched for Li Ao's name online in private, and when he saw Li Ao's resume, which included an IMO gold medal and two SCI papers, he did feel a sense of admiration.

Those who were exceptionally admitted to the cutting-edge project team by Professor Rudy are certainly not ordinary high school students.

In order to quickly build a closer relationship, Ah-Qiong kept calling Li Ao "Bro" all the way.

The two took the elevator upstairs and headed straight for the research group's office.

In the corridor, Arjun began to get to the point with Li Ao. "This is a collaborative project between our JFI, the U.S. Department of Energy, and Argonne National Laboratory. The core focus is on studying the energy stability of two-dimensional lattice models under different boundary couplings."

He spoke quickly, revealing the rigor of a science student: "Previously, we used a framework of discrete energy functional combined with spectral estimation, attempting to verify the lower bound of stability through numerical simulation results."

"However, the current model is still stuck at a few points. The main problem is that the error control caused by the boundary correction term is not tight enough, resulting in the existing lower bound data not being good enough, making it difficult to meet the requirements of the next phase report."

Arjun glanced at Li Ao and instructed, "After you join the group, you'll be responsible for the discrete energy lower bound estimation under boundary weights, together with Amber. The mathematical tools involved in this part are very compatible with your previous paper on convex functions."

Li Ao listened attentively as he walked.

He knew perfectly well that this precise allocation of tasks down to the individual level must have been personally approved by Professor Rudy.

He had already reviewed the relevant materials last night and knew that his paper on "two-dimensional discrete averaging of convex functions" indeed had great application potential in discrete energy estimation.

Furthermore, since this task was being carried out in collaboration with the experienced senior student Amber, he immediately felt more confident and assured that he could quickly integrate into the work.

As they were talking, Arjun had already pushed open the door to an office.

The room was spacious, with several computer workstations arranged side by side against the wall.

At that moment, only one Latina woman was organizing data in front of a monitor in the office.

"Professor Rudy has a meeting this morning and probably won't be back until noon. Amber and a few other doctoral students stayed up all night running simulations, so they shouldn't be here yet."

Arjun briefly explained where the group members were going, then pointed to a girl not far away and introduced her, "Her name is Isabella Martinez, she is an undergraduate student in the Department of Physics at the University of Chicago, and she is currently helping out in the research group."

Isabella, who was checking the output file, heard the noise and turned around.

Her gaze immediately fell on Li Ao. Before Ah Qiong could finish her introduction, and before Li Ao could even speak, she took the initiative to step forward and greet him.

"Hello, Dr. Li."

Isabella said in a lighthearted tone, "I heard from Arjun yesterday that the math department would be sending people to help us, and I didn't expect to see them here so early today. Just call me Bella from now on."

As a physics undergraduate, Isabella was among the lowest-ranking "bottom-tier" members in this project team where everyone had at least a PhD.

Working alongside this group of highly educated professionals, she actually felt considerable pressure, fearing that her data processing errors would slow down the progress.

Yesterday, Arjun told her that Professor Rudy had brought in an outside helper named Li Ao from the mathematics department, and she naturally assumed that he was also a doctoral student, just like Amber.

Seeing him in person, she felt he was far too young, but out of professional courtesy, she promptly addressed him as "Dr. Li" to try and build rapport.

This shout startled Li Ao.

He subconsciously looked at Arjun, only to find the guy standing to the side suppressing a laugh, showing no intention of helping to clarify the situation.

Li Ao could only cough lightly to cover his embarrassment and honestly corrected her, "Um—Bella, I'm not a doctoral student."

"Are you a postdoctoral researcher?"

Isabella was somewhat surprised and looked at him curiously. "You look really young."

Li Ao shook his head: "I'm still in high school."

Isabella's eyes widened.

She understands the current threshold of this topic better than anyone else.

This is a key project that will be a fierce battle with teams from prestigious universities such as Caltech. The team members are mostly PhDs or even post-doctoral fellows in the relevant fields.

If she hadn't spent the summer doing odd jobs and data work for Professor Rudy, she wouldn't even have been qualified to get involved, even as an undergraduate physics student at the university.

If they were just ordinary high school students, they would probably be busy practicing SAT questions or preparing college application materials right now, and probably wouldn't even recognize the matrix form of discrete operators.

But since Professor Rudy personally recruited him, this guy must be a hidden big shot.

After a moment's thought, Isabella quickly turned her expectant gaze to Arjun beside her: "Arjun, stop watching and tell us!"

Ah-Qiong, who was always eager for a good show, cleared her throat and nodded, saying, "I'm not kidding, Leo is indeed a 12th-grade high school student."

Before Isabella could respond, he changed the subject: "However, he recently published an SCI paper on 'two-dimensional discrete averaging of convex functions,' which has been accepted by *Applied Mathematics Letters*. The method in his paper is highly compatible with the discrete energy estimation and boundary weight analysis in our project."

"Professor Rudy personally went to Professor Jensen of the Mathematics Department and specifically requested this."

After hearing these words, Isabella was completely stunned.

She usually works under professors and doctoral students, and can only do basic data cleaning, so she naturally knows how difficult it is to publish an SCI paper.

Especially for theoretical pure mathematics papers, the review standards are extremely stringent.

This young man, who hasn't even gone to university yet, already has an SCI paper in hand. No wonder Professor Rudy made an exception and got him into the group.

Because she had been completely focused on meeting the project's deadlines, she had no energy to pay attention to gossip from other departments, which led to this huge misunderstanding.

After realizing what had happened, Isabella's expression became visibly embarrassed.

Fortunately, Ah-Jung spoke up in time to help her out: "Alright, you've been watching long enough this morning. Go get something to eat first. I'll show Leo around our workstation."

"Okay—you guys get back to work!"

Isabella felt like she had been granted a pardon and hurriedly packed her things before slipping out of the office.

After watching her leave, Ah-Qiong pulled up a chair and led Li Ao to sit in front of an empty computer, and began to explain in detail the various tasks she would be responsible for next.

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