Chapter 119 - 116: Why Are You Looking for the School of Mathematics?
Dean Liu Ruochuan of the School of Mathematics sat in his chair.
Watching Li Dong walk in, he tried his best to put on an amiable and friendly expression.
"Li Dong, come, have a seat," Dean Liu said with a beaming smile, gesturing to the chair opposite him.
After Li Dong sat down, Dean Liu didn’t beat around the bush and asked directly.
"Li Dong, I have something to ask you."
"That paper in the latest issue of *Mathematics of Computation*, ’A New Dimensionality Reduction Algorithm for Multipoint Evaluation of the Riemann Zeta Function on the Critical Line,’ with the author credited as Dong Li... is that you?"
Although Dean Liu’s tone was relatively calm, the expectation in his eyes was impossible to hide.
Li Dong nodded matter-of-factly.
"Yes, that’s me."
Then he asked another question.
"But I only submitted the final revised manuscript last week and haven’t received an official notice yet. Is it already published online?"
Seeing Li Dong confirm it, Dean Liu shot up from his chair and said excitedly,
"Not only is it published!"
"Your paper was put on the highest-level fast track by the editorial department, selected as the Editor’s Choice for this issue, and featured as a top recommendation on the AMS official website homepage!"
Seeing that Li Dong was still a bit stunned, Dean Liu continued,
"And I’ve read your paper carefully. The underlying mathematical logic for the dimensionality reduction is beautiful!"
"Do you know who personally reviewed your manuscript?"
"It was Professor Su Qiwang, a chair professor at Brown University’s Department of Applied Mathematics!"
This time, Li Dong was genuinely shocked.
How could he not know the name Su Qiwang?
The man was an absolute titan in the international field of Computational Mathematics today!
He was a recipient of the highest award from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics in the United States, and moreover, the winner of the highest honor in Computational Mathematics—the Von Neumann Prize!
His status in the fields of scientific computing and numerical solutions for partial differential equations was significant enough to be ranked in the entire history of the discipline. Among living scholars, he was firmly at the apex of the pyramid.
"Not only did Professor Su personally review your manuscript,"
"He also personally applied to Brown University’s high-performance computing center for large-scale dedicated computing nodes!"
"And just yesterday, the results of the independent verification came out. His team used the dimensionality reduction algorithm from your paper, the one based on the nonlinear expansion of the FFT grid..."
"Brown University’s supercomputer nodes ran at full capacity for just three days and verified 6 x 10¹³ (sixty trillion) non-trivial zeros!"
"Sixty trillion in three days!"
At this moment, Professor Zhou Qifeng from the School of Physics, who had been sitting on the sidelines like a background character, was completely dumbfounded by what he was hearing.
He was really just here today to pass on a message.
’What in the world is going on now?’
Professor Zhou might teach physics, but he was a legitimate professor at Yan University!
How could he not know about *Mathematics Computing*? How could he not know who Su Qiwang was?
’This... Didn’t this kid say his greatest love was physics?’
Previously, Li Dong had specifically sought out Professor Zhou to ask about handling the boundary conditions for the renormalization group correction of non-local self-energy within the dynamical mean-field theory framework of the Hubbard model in strongly correlated electron systems.
Back then, he had even solemnly sworn to Professor Zhou that theoretical physics was the greatest love of his life.
’So... what was this situation now?’
’How could you turn around and drop a nuclear bomb like this in the field of Computational Mathematics?’
’What the hell are you?’
Just as Professor Zhou was about to open his mouth and question this heartbreaker about the details...
Li Dong turned his head and suddenly took the offensive.
"Teacher Zhou!"
Li Dong asked seriously.
"I remember in the general introductory course on the first day of school, someone mentioned that the university offers special research grants for undergraduates who publish in top-tier international journals, right?"
Professor Zhou froze for a moment, then nodded subconsciously.
"Ah... yes, that policy does exist."
Li Dong quickly pressed on.
"So, for my paper, how much prize money do you think our university will award?"
Professor Zhou’s eyes went wide, his face a mask of utter bewilderment.
’You’ve produced a disruptive result that has shaken the international mathematics community, Professor Su Qiwang is personally vouching for you, and Dean Liu Ruochuan looks like he’s about to have a stroke...’
’And yet, the thing you, you brat, are most concerned about right now is how much prize money the university will give you?’
’What about your academic pursuits? What about your scholarly integrity?’
"It’s just a little..."
Professor Zhou was about to give Li Dong a good lecture, but the words had barely left his mouth when he realized... this "little" thing wasn’t a small sum of money at all!
According to Yan University’s current research award policy, a first-author paper in a top-tier Q1 SCI journal started at a reward of several tens of thousands.
If he applied through the university’s "Special Award for Major Scientific Research Breakthroughs," the prize money could probably be upwards of several hundred thousand!
Dean Liu Ruochuan had only just managed to calm down a little from his excitement.
He looked at Li Dong, and the more he looked, the more he liked him.
’It’s good that he likes money. I liked money when I was young, too.’
’This pragmatic personality is great! As long as it’s a problem money can solve, it’s not a problem for the Yan University School of Mathematics!’
"Li Dong, don’t you worry about the prize money! As the Dean of the School of Mathematics, I’ll personally take this to the university president for approval! I will absolutely fight for the highest-level award for you!"
Dean Liu was just about to use this opportunity to formally pull Li Dong into the School of Mathematical Sciences’ camp.
However, after getting a firm promise about the prize money, Li Dong asked another question.
"Dean Liu, since the underlying mathematical logic of this algorithm has been verified and there are no issues... could I apply to the university for access to the nodes on our Yan University’s ’Weiming No.1’ supercomputer cluster, or the high-performance computing platform?"
Li Dong knew very well that the most important thing for him right now was to increase his group’s authority, which naturally required pushing this algorithm to its limits.
When Dean Liu heard this, his heart blossomed with joy.
’He’s the one asking to borrow the School of Mathematics’ resources!’
’As long as you use the computing power platform that our School of Mathematics applied for, you’ll be one of us from now on!’
"No problem! Absolutely no problem!" Dean Liu readily agreed.
"Our School of Mathematics has a dedicated time quota at the university’s Supercomputing Center! However many nodes you want to apply for, I’ll just..."
BANG!
The door to the seminar room was suddenly thrown open from the outside.
Academician Gao Wen had already flown back to Yan University from Pengcheng.
"Applying for supercomputer nodes? Why are you going to his School of Mathematics?"
"What do those theoretical mathematics people know about low-level hardware scheduling?"
"What do they know about cache coherence in a NUMA architecture?"
"If they approve the computing power for you, all they can do is pile on nodes. They can’t help you squeeze every last drop of hardware potential out of your algorithm!"
Academician Gao turned his head to look at Li Dong, the fanaticism in his eyes even more intense than Dean Liu’s.
"Li Dong! The concurrent logic for dimensionality reduction in multipoint evaluation from your paper is practically tailor-made for large-scale parallel computing!"
Academician Gao roared with complete confidence.
"You want computing power, right? Our School of Information Science has got you covered!"
"The GPU clusters of the State Key Laboratory, the highest-level high-performance computing nodes at Yan University—use them however you want! If your approval is held up for even a single second, I, Gao Wen, will write my name backward!"