Renowned Chinese-American mathematician Zhongwei Shen has departed from the US to assume a chair professorship position at Westlake University in Hangzhou.
In July, he became part of Westlake's School of Science to pursue his extensive research in partial differential equations and harmonic analysis – mathematical disciplines that serve as fundamental tools for modeling natural phenomena.
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Shen, who gained admission to Peking University as a mathematics student at the age of 14, has resided in the US for four decades, with almost 30 years spent at the University of Kentucky, where he achieved the rank of distinguished professor and held the position of mathematics department chair.
As a charter member of the first cohort of American Mathematical Society Fellows, Shen has consistently maintained strong connections with China, including his appointment as a Changjiang Scholar at Lanzhou University in 2015.
According to Shen, he had been contemplating a return to China for an extended period and had been monitoring progress in his homeland.
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He explained that Westlake attracted him due to its advanced, research-oriented methodology and the global nature of its mathematics faculty.
Shen's scholarly work connects sophisticated mathematics with physics, employing equations to characterize intricate systems from fluid dynamics to quantum particles.
A significant portion of his research addresses challenges in non-uniform or "rough" environments where conventional approaches prove inadequate, and he has created methodologies that have enhanced comprehension of how materials with complex structures function.
Currently positioned at Westlake, Shen expressed his desire to continue advancing the research questions that had shaped his professional journey.
He noted that collaboration was increasingly becoming fundamental to mathematical work, with individual researchers contributing distinct skill sets and viewpoints. At Westlake, he mentioned his anticipation for cross-disciplinary intellectual exchange.
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Shen is also eager to return to the classroom. “I like teaching students, especially undergraduates,” he said. “They have enthusiasm and curiosity, and guiding them to see why a complicated formula must be true is one of the joys of teaching.”