Things I learned during my time in UIUC (3)
Doing research with the late Professor Chuang
My close friends at UIUC included a few exchange students from National Taiwan University (NTU) and National Chiao Tung University (NCTU), some American-born Taiwanese, and other exchange students I met in class. One of them was a Chinese international student. Whenever I saw him on campus, he was either in a classroom or on his way to a classroom or lab. He always wore gold-rimmed glasses, had a short, neat haircut. I don't recall ever seeing him with friends; he was always alone. I've forgotten his name, so let's just call him Li.
Li told me that, like me, he was only there for six months. Because of this, he needed to make the most of his time. He wanted to work very hard so that he can excel in research and do well on exams. By doing so, he explained, would give him a chance to get a recommendation letter from a UIUC professor, which would be a significant advantage when applying for graduate school. "Six months and you're doing research?" I thought exchange students were here just to experience American university life and make friends. "I already found a professor before coming to the US, so I wouldn't waste any time," he said. It was then I realized how laid-back I was, still at the starting line with my roommate at fraternity parties, while the Chinese students were already sprinting a hundred meters in the lab.
Therefore, I decided to catch up and started checking out the university website, gathering information on professors, and looking for research that interested me. I originally studied electrical engineering, but later found it very difficult. Circuit design was very exhausting, and chip production was incredibly labor-intensive. I remember in one course at NCTU where I spent a semester in the lab, creating a semiconductor device from scratch on a wafer. After a semester of hard work, the wafer's color seemed to change, but the finished product was, of course, invisible to the naked eye – like “the emperor's new clothes.” Unless you put it on a machine to measure it, no one would believe there was something on it. Holding a semester's worth of effort in my hands, I felt no sense of accomplishment. Therefore, before coming abroad as an exchange student, I decided to switch fields. If I wanted to switch to computer science, I'd have to double major in electrical engineering and computer science. Considering I was already a junior, it seemed a bit difficult. Thus, I wanted to use this opportunity abroad to take some optics courses to see if I had any interest, for example, in lasers or optical components.
Part of my desire to study optics stemmed from the peak of Taiwan's optics industry before the 2008 financial crisis. Optoelectronics companies like Chunghwa Picture Tubes (CPT) saw their best profits ever. CPT even donated a building to NCTU, to serve as a talent cultivation center. Passing the newly completed building every day on my way to school, I couldn't help but feel the boundless bright future of Taiwan's optoelectronics industry.
However, as history later showed, Chinese panel manufacturers rose, and Taiwanese panel manufacturers' revenues gradually declined, ending Taiwan's decade of golden age in panels. CPT went bankrupt in 2022, and there were rumors of using the Chiao Ying Building to pay off debts. At the time, of course I didn't know any of this would happen. I always felt that optoelectronic products were at least visible to the eye, like screens and lasers, unlike the invisible nano-scale electronic devices. So, after going abroad, I decided to start taking optics courses at UIUC and look for an optics professor to do research with.
Most UIUC professors, upon hearing that I would only be staying for six months, apologized and said they didn't have research projects that short. After all, just understanding the research topic and relevant papers takes more than six months, so being rejected repeatedly wasn't very surprising. That's why I'm always grateful to the professor who eventually took me in: Professor Shunlien Chuang. Professor Chuang's research primarily focused on optoelectronic devices, and he had a graduate-level textbook titled "Physics of Photonic Devices." I even bought a copy at the time and asked him to sign it.
When I met him the first time in 2008, my first impression was how small his office was. It might also have been because there were too many books; the four walls were piled high with books and papers, making the already small space feel even smaller. The professor was not tall, had some white hair, but was full of energy. He said he played badminton whenever he had time, so I occasionally ran into him in the hallway on weekends. When speaking with him, I was actually always very nervous. The professor was often stern, looking directly at you, as if a slow answer would make him frown.
I never would have imagined that a few years after I left UIUC, the professor would retire due to health reasons, spending his later years in the warmer climate of California, and passing away in 2014 at the age of 59. I was shocked when I heard the news at UCLA. At UCLA, I always saw many very old professors; the professor for a waveguide course I took at the time was the 70 years old Japanese Professor Itoh. So, I always felt that Professor Chuang, being so dedicated to research and working in the same field as mine, would meet me somehow somewhere in the future. Little did I know that those brief six months at UIUC were Professor Chuang's last few years at UIUC.
Since I had never done research before with professors, my six months with Professor Chuang served me as a great "lesson." This lesson taught me how to interact with professors, which made my later studies and research at UCLA much smoother.
At that time, the professor gave me a research topic, primarily on the theoretical derivation of signal amplifiers. When I first started the research, the professor wanted me to clearly understand the research topic and motivation and set a date for me to report to him. That date, as luck would have it, was also the day of my first quantum mechanics midterm. I felt bad asking the professor to reschedule, so I just roughly skimmed the papers, looked up key theories and terms, and then focused entirely on preparing for quantum mechanics. Since I had taken a semester of quantum mechanics at NCTU, I overconfidently enrolled in quantum mechanics II in the physics department, hoping to seamlessly continue from NCTU's quantum mechanics. Later, as expected, I was bombarded with all sorts of bizarre quantum theories and calculations.
The difficulty of quantum mechanics lies in its difference from the "perceptual" world: objects on a table don't pass through it and fall (quantum tunneling), one person doesn't split into two and walk through different doors (wave-particle duality), nor can you read minds or instantly transmit your thoughts to the other side of the Earth (quantum entanglement). But these phenomena are all possible in the quantum world. So,l you can't use common sense when solving homework or exam questions, because your common sense doesn't apply in this world. The TA said that we have to be exposed in the quantum world for an extremely long time and feel utterly frustrated before we truly achieve enlightenment. Seeing the TA's prematurely graying hair, he must have already been enlightened.
Although I hadn't achieved enlightenment yet, I was already extremely frustrated. The vast majority of the class were American. Besides me, there were two other exchange students: the aforementioned Li and a student from Korea. After the first midterm, I was disheartened. I couldn't even understand half of the questions, and I guessed most of the questions. I realized that the quantum mechanics in the physics department might not be something I could grasp after only taking quantum mechanics in Taiwan. I asked Li how he felt, and he said he was 70% confident, which hit me even harder.
Before I had recovered from my heavy mood, I had to report to Professor Chuang's office. My presentation started smoothly, but soon after a series of questions from the professor, I got stuck and couldn't answer. The professor's face immediately darkened. After about 10 seconds of awkward silence, "If you're not prepared, you shouldn't come here and waste my time, and your time," the professor finally snapped. I quickly said that I had prepared, but had been busy preparing for the quantum mechanics midterm. "Are you saying your quantum mechanics is more important than our meeting?" The professor got even angrier. On the way back to the dorm, thinking about failing the quantum mechanics exam and the disastrous first meeting with the professor, I couldn't help but feel a wave of sadness. This was an experience I had absolutely not anticipated before coming to the US, and a setback I had never encountered in my academic life.
A few days later, the quantum mechanics midterm results came out. Li scored over 70, placing first in the class, truly confirming his 70% confidence with no error. The Korean student scored over 50, placing second, and I scored 40, placing third. The professor scratched his head, apologizing for making the exam too difficult. I also scratched my head, feeling embarrassed that foreign exchange students had taken the top three spots in the class. I wondered if the local students hated the exchange students who came every year, or if they were used to it, accustomed to foreign academic overachievers.
The second meeting with Professor Chuang went smoothly. The professor introduced me to one of his postdoctoral researchers, Zhang Shuwei, saying that this student wanted to become a professor and was looking for a teaching position, and that I would be his first student, allowing him to experience mentoring. This postdoc later successfully joined the Department of Optoelectronics at NCTU shortly after I left UIUC. I met with him regularly once a week to discuss research. Each meeting, he would give me some questions and papers to read. At the end of the semester, I compiled the discussion results into a report for Professor Chuang to review. We had originally planned to submit this report for publication, but by then I had returned to Taiwan, and was caught up with military service and applying for graduate school, so it eventually fell through.
One semester quickly passed. After leaving UIUC, aside from the persistent emails from the school hoping for alumni donations (which I could never unsubscribe from), my memory of UIUC became vague with time. It's unlikely I'll ever have the chance to return to that school amidst the cornfields in my lifetime.