Chapter 455: Good Opportunity For Validation

Translator: Henyee Translations  Editor: Henyee Translations

With White Sheridan’s help, the patent number was obtained quickly. This was even faster than Lu Zhou’s previous lawyer team in China.

Sheridan was the former director of the intellectual property department at Verizon. Just this alone was worth half of Sheridan’s salary.

After receiving the patent number, everything else sailed smoothly.

With a group of strong and expensive lawyers as a backup, the approval process was a walk in the park.

Actually, for more popular patents, authorizing the patent to outside sources during the patent filing stage wasn’t anything unusual.

However, even though the field of superconducting materials was a popular academia topic, it wasn’t very attractive to the market.

This was obvious in Pablo Jarillo Herrero’s research team.

Before receiving the US$10 million fund from Lu Zhou, the team of superconducting materials researchers led by Herrero was funded by the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation and the National Science Foundation; they didn’t receive funding from any market companies.

In short, with Connie’s help, Lu Zhou completed the entire thesis by mid-November.

Lu Zhou gathered the other two main authors of the thesis. They then went to the coffee shop that was exclusive to members of the Ivy Club and held a short meeting.

“The thesis is complete, and I’ve communicated with Professor Herrero through email. They are very interested in the theoretical interpretation of the superlattice bandwidth under the new angle, and they will continue to do research in this area.”

Lu Zhou paused for a second and looked at his two partners before he said, “If everything goes well, after this thesis, our cooperation and research agreement with Professor Herrero will come to an end.”

Because they were in a coffee shop, the three decided not to clap and instead gently tapped their coffee cups together.

Once the research on graphene superconductivity had begun, Lu Zhou’s two research institutes would definitely conduct research on the application aspects, like improving the SG-1 material or increasing its superconductivity transition temperature.

As for Professor Herrero, he seemed to be more interested in researching the theoretical aspects.

Therefore, even though their research would be centered around the same direction, their research content would be wildly different.

Of course, even though their cooperation was over, Lu Zhou’s US$10 million research fund would still continue to support Professor Herrero’s research.

After all, Professor Herrero’s research team had contributed greatly to the SG-1 superconductivity research project.

Lu Zhou also hoped that Professor Herrero’s research team could discover more interesting theoretical research results even though these things might not be profitable.

Theoretical research was the basis of applied research, and these seemingly useless things could one day play a crucial role.

Lu Zhou explained the basic situation to his two partners. He then paused for a second before he looked at Connie and said, “As I said earlier, Professor Herrero will focus on theoretical research. You’ve been at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a year, so you should know more about their research process than I do.

“I want to hear your future plans.”

Computational materials science was a tool whether it was the “computational materials” redefined by Lu Zhou or the “first principle” widely accepted by the computational chemistry community.

This tool could be used for both application and theoretical research. However, Connie seemed to have determined his future research direction.

Connie hesitated for a long time before he finally said confidently, “I want to do applied research.”

When Lu Zhou heard his response, he nodded.

“I’ll write a letter of recommendation for you in a few days. Take that to Sarrot Laboratory in Silicon Valley and Professor Sarrot will arrange work for you. You will also have your own research team which will be mainly responsible for computational chemistry and superconducting materials research… Of course, the choice is yours. If you want to work at some university, I can write another letter of recommendation for you.”

Since there weren’t any computational chemistry methods that Lu Zhou could teach him, this letter of recommendation meant that Connie could finally graduate as a post-doc.

Lu Zhou welcomed Connie to work under him. However, if Connie had other plans, Lu Zhou would also respect his decision.

Connie scratched his head and smiled as he said, “I’d rather work in your laboratory obviously.”

Doing research at some university? No thanks. I’d rather work under a Nobel Prize laureate.

Not to mention, according to Lu Zhou, Connie would become a “mini-boss”. This meant he would be well funded and have people working for him. If he wanted to earn this position on his own, he would be 40 years old before he achieved his goal.

Although Connie had the body of a gorilla, he wasn’t stupid at all.

When Lu Zhou heard Connie’s answer, he smiled. He then reached out his right hand and said, “Welcome to the team.”

Connie shook hands with him and continued to talk about research.

He put on a serious face and said, “Oh yeah, Professor Lu, since the thesis is already written, what next? Should we submit it to a journal or an academic conference?”

Lu Zhou thought for a bit and said, “Submit it to a conference. If we hurry up, we might be able to submit it to this year’s MRS Autumn Conference.”

Although it was past the deadline stated on the official website, a Nobel Prize laureate had special privileges whether it was for the channel of submission or the amount of attention the report would receive.

Professor Chirik asked, “Do you plan on going to this year’s MRS Autumn Conference?”

Lu Zhou shook his head and said, “I have to go to Stockholm in August, so I’m afraid I don’t have time for it.”

The MRS Autumn Conference had always been held the day after Black Friday, ranging from the end of November to the beginning of December. The duration depended on the size of the conference.

Theoretically, Lu Zhou could attend. However, he would have a very tight schedule.

When Professor Chirik heard that Lu Zhou wasn’t planning on attending, he smiled and said, “Since you don’t have time, I’ll attend the MRS Autumn Conference for you.”

This is a good chance to brag… Oh, I mean validate myself in the industry.

With his achievements, Lu Zhou didn’t need to validate himself. However, this was a good opportunity for Chirik.

Lu Zhou smiled and shook his head at how eager Professor Chirik was.

“Then you’ll do the report… Connie, go with Professor Chirik. You can be his report assistant.”

Connie excitedly nodded.

“Okay, Professor!”

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