Chapter 2: Yet, On the Other Hand

Zhou Yun exhaled deeply, leaning back in his chair as his fingers unconsciously tapped on the table.

Although he had previously declared that graduate school was not for him, when he reconsidered, given his current talent and youthful vigor, he was practically a scientific prodigy.

The greatest pain of graduate studies, aside from troublesome advisors, largely stemmed from the inability to produce meaningful results, often leading to the mere padding of papers just to graduate.

In short, there was no positive reinforcement, only a mountain of negatives—it was no wonder it was a miserable experience.

Thus, his initial instinct upon rebirth was to simply find a job.

But now, circumstances had changed.

Under these new conditions, pursuing graduate studies didn’t seem impossible.

If he could truly produce results, the benefits of graduate school would far outweigh those of a regular job.

At this moment, Zhou Yun’s resolve against graduate school wasn’t as firm as before.

After some internal struggle, he decided: yes, he would pursue graduate studies!

Although Qiantang University was an ordinary non-prestigious institution—several years ago it was considered a first-tier school, which was decent but still far behind the country's top universities like Tsinghua, Peking University, or Zhejiang University.

However, graduate school wasn’t undergraduate studies. If it were the college entrance exam stage, Zhou Yun would have no hesitation in retaking it because the level of the undergraduate institution greatly influenced one’s future.

But at the graduate level, as anyone who has been through it knows, the school’s prestige is not the decisive factor in a student’s future; much more depends on the advisor!

If your advisor has strong connections, holds high status in the academic circle, and controls abundant resources, then even if the university itself is average, your future development won’t be poor.

Of course, generally speaking, the better the school, the more impressive the advisors, and the better the students’ prospects.

If Zhou Yun were to take the exam again, given his current intellect, he could easily pick from the top universities in the country, but this would require weighing the time and financial costs against the potential benefits.

The time cost was clear: one year could be the equivalent of one or even several top-tier journal publications.

Financially, even studying at home would mean his parents supporting his living expenses; although he could support himself by working and studying simultaneously, was it really necessary?

Whether at Peking University or other institutions, the difference at the graduate level boiled down to resources and connections—something that could often be offset by a strong advisor.

In science and engineering, research output mattered most; the more impressive your results, the more resources and connections would come to you.

For Zhou Yun, choosing an advisor who could offer strong resource support at the start was sufficient; the school’s prestige mattered little.

Moreover, he had the advantage of foresight—he knew clearly which advisors in the department were good and which were not, so he wouldn’t make any mistakes.

As luck would have it, Zhou Yun knew of an advisor with both abundant resources and extensive connections.

This advisor was a leading talent under the prestigious National Ten Thousand Talent Plan. Although not yet at the level of the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, at a non-elite school like Qiantang University, he was already quite impressive. Additionally, his own mentor was an academician, with a network that could be described as unparalleled.

This advisor was also very approachable. Although his group had about twenty to thirty students, there were no sub-advisors. In other words, for competitions or papers, the advisor personally provided one-on-one guidance.

Zhou Yun knew this well because in his previous life, his workstation was in this advisor’s lab—they practically bumped into each other constantly.

Once decided, Zhou Yun would not hesitate. From what he knew, the advisor’s student quotas were usually filled before summer; if he wanted to become his student, he needed to act quickly.

Moreover, for such a prominent advisor, unless your preliminary exam scores were outstanding, you would almost certainly have to pass another round of interviews.

Passing the interview now was a sure thing for him, but Zhou Yun’s ambitions went beyond merely passing.

In research, an unavoidable factor was resources—money, plain and simple.

And not just a little money. Take the AI field, for example: to produce results, graphics cards were essential. Running experiments on CPUs might be possible, but painfully slow—to the point where your computer might break down before the experiments finished. Most experiments simply couldn’t run without GPUs.

Not to mention that professional computing cards required for running models often cost tens or even hundreds of thousands of yuan—far beyond Zhou Yun’s means.

The only source of such resources, and the only one who could grant him access, was his advisor. But to persuade the advisor to provide resources, he had to prove his worth.

Advisors valued papers above all else. For a big-name mentor, ordinary papers often wouldn’t impress; at minimum, a CCF-B level publication was necessary.

Zhou Yun had published at the B level in his last life, barely scraping through graduation with that paper.

However, it had been a superficial paper—a patchwork of others’ methods, barely a new contribution.

If someone’s paper was about tomato scrambled eggs, his was about tomato scrambled duck eggs.

Is there really a difference between tomato and “西红柿” (the same word in Chinese)? None.

Is there much difference between duck eggs and chicken eggs? A little, but not significant.

In truth, most scientific research wasn’t as grand as people imagined. The phrase “academic laborers” aptly described the majority of graduate students.

However, this time, he was unlikely to write such a paper again.

Before, his mind could only take him from tomato scrambled eggs to tomato scrambled duck eggs; now, he could envision the full imperial banquet.

If not for a lack of ability, who would want to write shallow papers? Worthless work that even required paying publication fees.

While pondering which direction to choose, he opened his computer.

Since he wanted to leave a strong impression on the advisor, a little preparation was certainly necessary.

Before making his presentation, he sent an email to the advisor, roughly stating: “I wish to join your group and believe I have the ability. Please consider me.”

After sending the email, he skillfully opened a blank PowerPoint template.

On the white background, he typed a line in English:

“AgileEdge: Adaptive Co-Optimization for Pervasive Low-Latency Edge AI.”

This roughly translated to: an adaptive co-optimization framework for edge AI.

This was the first research topic he chose for himself—a method allowing large AI models to run both quickly and efficiently on small devices like smartphones or laptops.

“AgileEdge” was the name of this method. As for why he used English, it was purely to impress—after all, a fully English presentation would surely catch the advisor’s eye.

With his research direction decided, creating the presentation was straightforward. Research presentations didn’t require fancy animations—just black text on white, some images, and not too many slides.

The most important thing would be how well he spoke.