Professor Zijie Yan was identified as the faculty victim in a deadly shooting that sent the UNC-Chapel Hill campus into lockdown on Monday. UNC-Chapel Hill graduate student Tailei Qi, 34, has been charged with first degree murder.
Yan worked as an assistant professor at the department of applied physical sciences, specializing in nanoscience technology. Qi, a second-year PhD student who was arrested after the incident on Monday, had been working closely with Yan’s research group at UNC since early 2022. The incident occurred on campus in Caudill Labs.
“We want to ensure we gather every piece of evidence so we can determine what happened here today and why it happened,” said UNC-Chapel Hill Police Chief Brian James in a Monday press conference. “It is too early in this investigation to know a motive for the shooting.”
