Jan. 9, 2012

Shortly before Christmas, Chinese scholar Zhou Ruhong flew all the way back to China from USA. As a visiting professor at Zhejiang University, Zhou has a busy agenda, meeting his doctoral students as their mentor, attending the Westlake Forum and so on. 

Currently, Zhou is the director of Soft Matter Theory and Simulation research group at IBM Watson Research Center, and an Adjunct Professor at Department of Chemistry, Columbia University. He was also the US President’s Award winner in 2009, and was elected 2011 American Association for Advancement of Science fellow and American Physical Society fellow. 

Zhou was among the first mixed class graduates at Zhejiang University. In the past 10 years, his love for alma mater drives him to travel frequently between USA and Hangzhou.

In 1984, Zhou Ruhong was enrolled in the first mixed class (now Chu Kochen Honors College). “The two years in the mixed class were the most challenging and rewarding time in my life. The training principles emphasizing scientific thinking for engineering students had a huge impact on us.” Zhou remarked. In 1980s, with the prevalence of idealism and strong academic atmosphere, students even wrote English words on the back of meal tickets. Zhou always remembered and mentioned it while recalling the motivating atmosphere at Zhejiang University.

After graduation, Zhou transferred to the Department of Physics and pursued his study on condensed matter physics for his master’s program. Zhou published a paper in Physical Review which was a huge success and made him youngest visiting fellow of China Center of Advanced Science and Technology.

After 3 years of working with Zhejiang University, Zhou went to Columbia University for Ph.D with a full scholarship. In the past 17 years, his love extends and he holds that the best reward for alma mater is to teach students with what he’s been exploring. In the past 7 years, Zhou has instructed six doctoral students, one of them receiving “national excellent doctoral dissertation” award nomination. 

In his visit in 2011, Zhou participated in the 81th conference of Westlake Forum on which experts of mechanics, physics, material science, chemistry, medicine and other disciplines gathered to discuss the latest developments in the emerging field of “soft matter science”. For the new year, Zhou plans to bury himself in the study on interactions between protein and nano-materials. “I believe that there will be major breakthroughs in this field in the coming decades.”