Top Student at Their Peak-Chapter 808 - 272: Graduation Ceremony! (Part 2)

Let’s put it this way: In previous years, Yanbei University and the Math Research Center published about ten articles in international top journals each year in the field of science.

Now, that number has almost doubled.

As the professors jokingly say, ever since Professor Qiao’s graduation team formed, it’s akin to the school merging with a medical school.

As everyone knows, the reason universities loved to start medical schools or merge with them was because medicine was one of the easiest scientific fields to produce papers of questionable quality.

"That’s indeed a pity. But it’s understandable that Professor Qiao is busy. After all, he must be under a lot of pressure now."

The roommates detected the disappointment in Xia Keke’s tone and immediately offered some comfort.

Since a renowned professor at the school is the boyfriend of a dorm mate, everyone is more concerned about Qiao Yu.

Although Qiao Yu often makes a splash internationally and his team publishes a lot of papers, the two projects he advocated for years ago have yet to make any significant moves, which is a major issue.

Back when the Sky-based Denial Project and the Quantum Simulation Computer Project were launched, although the officials didn’t explicitly promote Qiao Yu, over the years, the mastermind behind them has been analyzed and found out.

Especially the Quantum Simulation Computer Project.

When Qiao Yu live-streamed the reduction of the dimension-strike impact of quantum simulation calculations on the current financial trading system, Huaxia launched extensive research into quantum simulation computers, so it would be strange if Qiao Yu weren’t the main driver.

But four years have passed, and neither the exciting Sky-based Denial Project nor the research on quantum simulation computers representing the next era seems to have made any groundbreaking progress.

As a result, the voice of doubt online gradually began to dominate.

Some people are motivated by money, some are genuinely oblivious, and others are simply dissatisfied with everything they see. But in a country with over a billion people, it’s impossible to completely eliminate those who like to speak harshly.

Besides, wanting to wear the crown invariably means bearing its weight.

A fundamental rule of society is that as long as you are doing something, there will inevitably be opposition.

Normal people have many things to do every day; there’s no time to argue with idle people online. So the increasing online doubts are naturally understandable.

In such a situation, it’s normal for Qiao Yu to be under pressure. If he weren’t at all pressured, he’d really be utterly carefree.

"Actually, it’s not that bad. Qiao Yu seldom goes online, and he doesn’t care about what people say online, but he is indeed extremely busy these past two months."

Xia Keke said casually.

Although Qiao Yu is always tight-lipped and rarely talks to her about his research, it’s easy for Xia Keke to sense if he’s busy or not.

There’s no room for doubt between the two of them. If Qiao Yu weren’t busy, he’d definitely come to see her on the weekends.

In the past two months, she only saw Qiao Yu once; they ate together in the canteen while Qiao Yu vented about how unreliable his project professors have been. Since then, they haven’t met again.

They only managed to chat a bit on WeChat every night.

From this, it’s clear how busy Qiao Yu has been lately.

Tomorrow is the undergraduate graduation ceremony; Xia Keke already mentioned it to Qiao Yu on WeChat yesterday. He only replied this morning, saying he has a very important meeting today and will have to see if he can make it tomorrow.

Usually, when Qiao Yu says that, it means there’s no time.

After all, any meeting mentioned by Qiao Yu is invariably important. If he emphasizes it as important, then it is especially important. He definitely can’t miss it.

"Alright, that’s it for today, everyone get some rest. We can’t be listless at the graduation ceremony tomorrow. If we want to chat, we can chat all night tomorrow!"

The oldest sister in the dorm yawned as she spoke.

A major secret of harmonious university dorm life is that any persuasive suggestion always gets a quick response.

As usual, the lights in the dorm were soon turned off, and it quieted down.

...

On the other side, Qiao Yu was losing his temper at Zheng Zefeng in the computer video from his small room.

"Old Zheng, what can I say about such a simple topic? You have dozens of people under you, right? How come the efficiency is still this low? The hardware guys have a higher efficiency than you!

Everyone is waiting for us to make a breakthrough in embedding layer indexing technology. For a breakthrough, we need you to quickly update the mixed strategy for discrete and continuous coding.

How long has it been? Can’t such a simple problem still be solved? It’s not like I want to say this, but the graduation ceremony at Yanbei University is tomorrow, and I can’t attend because you guys held us back! What are you going to do about it?"

On the other side of the video, Zheng Zefeng looked embarrassed.

Actually, their work was always way ahead, for at least three consecutive years. After all, he primarily handles mathematical theory and applications.

Everyone knows applying theory to practice involves a massive workload.

Even though their work is varied, needing theoretical guidance for both hardware and software, with Qiao Yu’s steady support and every breakthrough providing labs something to test for several months, there wasn’t much pressure.

But in the last half-year, as various design tasks developed by leaps and bounds, their side began to slow down.

Especially since the first true general-purpose simulation quantum computer was successfully assembled at the beginning of the year, their work suddenly couldn’t keep up...

There were too many issues needing their side to solve.

Besides the embedding layer index issue that Qiao Yu mentioned, there’s the discrete marker problem, implementing multi-modal embedding functions by expanding vocabulary to solve strongly coupled system numerical simulations, designing a quantum parallel computing model, designing stabilizer error-correcting codes, conducting fault-tolerant control, etc...

This half-year, Zheng Zefeng has truly been busy beyond compare.

But who can he blame?

Back then, Qiao Yu originally wanted to add two more teams, but he thought it was completely unnecessary, believing they could handle it.

Now, all mathematical problems needing optimization fall on his team. Thus, getting scolded every two or three days...

"This... this problem is almost solved. I’ll urge them shortly..."

"How long is ’almost solved?’ Didn’t I say last time that it just needed simple optimization? How come it’s still not optimized after so long?"

"Mainly because I’ve been following up on the dynamic scheduling algorithm side recently. Indeed, I did relax a bit on this side. How about I focus my main energy here first?"

"How could that work? Coordinating quantum resources for multiple tasks also needs to be resolved as soon as possible. This doesn’t just pertain to the new computer project, but it’s also crucial for the Sky-based Denial project.

Now there are seven satellites in the Sky-based Denial project launched; why aren’t you quickly solving the problems? When do you plan for formal exercises? Everyone’s waiting to see the results, you know?"

Zheng Zefeng was speechless, looking innocent and overwhelmed, and very regretful.

If he had known, he should’ve agreed to form one more basic math group back then, then he wouldn’t be as passive now.

He shouldn’t have been so greedy, wanting to publish more articles, resulting in the basic math group becoming a weak spot now.

"Forget it, forget it, it’s my fault too for not planning it well, thinking I could help guide things from my side. Didn’t expect there’d be so many issues later on.

But Old Zheng, you still need to reflect. It’s my first time leading such a large project, but it’s not your first, you’re experienced, you dared to take on so much?"

Upon hearing this, Zheng Zefeng’s face turned red and he quickly agreed: "Yes, yes, yes, I should reflect."

Qiao Yu nodded, the lines on his face finally softened.

"Alright, since you’ve realized your mistake, let’s let it go this time. Tomorrow’s Ministry of Science and Technology meeting, you’ll attend in my place. Be sure to sincerely reflect at the meeting.

Tell them, after the most important synchronous orbit networking satellite in Asia is launched in two months, we guarantee all software-level issues will be resolved. By then, the first exercise of the Sky-based Denial plan will surely proceed smoothly!"

"What?!"