UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
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DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA 94720-7300
Professor Alex Zettl
TEL: 510/642-4939
FAX: 510/643-8497
e-mail:
October 29, 2014
Search Committee
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Dear Search Committee:
I am pleased to provide this reference letter for Dr. Qin Zhou, in support of his application
for an Assistant Professor position in your department. I am presently Qin’s postdoctoral
supervisor in the Physics Department at Berkeley.
Qin is an unusual and exceptional character. He received his Ph.D. from the Mechanical
Engineering Department at Berkeley under the guidance of Prof. Liwei Lin. I was at first a bit
hesitant to hire Qin because the project I was pursuing required someone with deep physics
knowledge. But, after a lengthy interiew with Qin, I became convinced that he indeed knew a lot
of physics and I decided to take him on. It was one of the best hires I have ever made.
Qin is not just a talented mechanical engineer who happens to know a lot of physics.
Rather, he is an exeptional scientist with an amazing combination of interests and skills, from
traditional engineering to synthetic chemistry to theoretical physics. He is the best postdoc I
currently have (out of 6), and ranks among the best, if not the best, postdoc I have ever had in my
31 years at Berkeley. Every day Qin amazes me with his fresh ideas for new experiments, his
incredible drive and efficiency, his versatility, and his dedication to fundamental science. He
thinks up his own experiments, designs and builds novel equipment, and performs very difficult
experiments in record time. He then performs the analysis and writes up the paper.
Qin’s accomplishments in my lab have been many. He invented a new kind of microheater
that allowed a critical sensor project to move forward. It allowed us to explore the fundamental
mechanism underlying a new type of H2S sensor we had developed using nanomaterials. Qin
then explored the synthesis and characterization of graphene. He learned the subtleties of
graphene growth and discovered an unusual effect—that some Raman signals are quenched
when graphene is grown (or placed) on platinum. For most students or postdocs, this would have
been the end of the story, but Qin was eager to learn the basic mechanism at play in this
quenching. He designed a multitude of sophisticated experiments to probe the interactions of d-
orbitals in the underlying metal on the band structure of graphene. He engaged a postdoc in
Professor Marvin Cohen’s theory group at Berkeley, Dr. Sinisa Coh, and together the two forged
ahead and figured this thorny theoretical problem out. I was thrilled by the result. In working
through the problem, Qin checked many books out of our library and learned supplementary
theoretical solid state physics relevant to the problem. It was impressive to watch him learn at a lightening pace.
This pattern has been repeated often by Qin, and more recently he has been exploring the
mechanical vibrational properties of graphene and the interaction of carbon nanotubes with
moving fluids. His interests cover fundamental physics to unique applications (recently he went out in the field to record bats in their native environment, using an ultra-wide-band graphene microphone he invented). I do not think any typical (and brilliant) mechanical engineer, or physicist, could
crack the diversity of problems as effectively as Qin has done. He really is a quantum superposition of
physicist and mechanical engineer, in the best possible sense!
Qin is also a model academic citizen in every respect. He is super friendly and honest, and is a
wonderful mentor to younger graduate students and undergraduates. Usually when another student or postdoc in my group comes to me with a good idea or interesting result, the student starts the conversation with “Qin actually gave me this idea….” or “Qin helped me with the key part of this experiment….”. Qin is a patient teacher and good project organizer. He is a very clear lecturer and takes criticism well. Most importantly, he is a team player. When I need to show a visitor my lab, I turn to Qin to help show the visitor around and explain the science. I have no doubt Qin will be successful in running an independent research group and raising grant money. He is bound to be an effective teacher in mechanical engineering, physics, or a related field.
In short, I give Qin Zhou my enthusiastic support for a faculty position. Gems like this
don’t come along very often—maybe once every ten or twenty years.
Sincerely,
Alex Zettl
Professor of Physics