Friends, Faculty Mourn Death of Minghui Yu

Bliss seems to pulse through Minghui Yu’s fingertips as he jumps into the air and smiles for a photograph taken by his girlfriend on a recent trip to Florida. In a moment of happiness on the sandy beach, he is relaxed in jeans and an orange tee swept back by the breeze.

It is this image that his friends and family will see when they think of him. His smile has a reputation of its own, and a life that will persist through the memories of Yu. The 24-year-old Graduate School of Arts and Sciences statistics Ph.D. student is remembered by close friends for his joyful attitude toward every aspect of his life—from the pursuit of knowledge in the classroom to the delight of jumping by the shore.

The morning after Yu’s tragic death, his friend, Changyao Chen, GSAS ’11, wrote in an e-mail, “I still cannot believe this truth ... and I can’t stop trembling when I’m typing. He’s such a nice guy, living in the same building as I’m, and there’s a large Chinese community in this building. Minghui is among the active ones, we hang out a lot when he was here. He’s always smiling whenever I met him, I still have to convince myself that we’ve lost him.”

Switching between the past and present tense, Chen’s words reveal the shock and grief felt by those close to Yu, many of whom got to know him through the Columbia University Chinese Students and Scholars Association, of which Yu was director of public relations. Through the association, which supports the social and cultural network of Chinese students on campus, Yu found a home away from home in New York City.

Born in 1983, Yu grew up as an only child in the Shandong province on the eastern coast of China. “Loving painting as a kid, Minghui always dreamed of turning into an artist, but he would never imagine studying on a science major in the college then years later,” Yu’s biography on the CUCSSA Web site reads.

His creativity fueled his intellectual prowess. His friend and CUCSSA Executive Vice President Junhua Shen, GSAS ’09, explained that Yu was “very special in his class, young compared to his peers.” During his schoolboy days, Shen said Yu served as class monitor, a leadership position that signified his maturity and ability to assist fellow students.

Yu went on to one of China’s most prestigious colleges, the University of Science and Technology of China , where he was placed in the “Special Class for the Gifted Young.” Upon graduation in 2006, he received the university’s highest honor, the Guo Moruo Award, which is bestowed on the highest achieving students in each USTC school. He arrived in the fall at Columbia in the Ph.D. program for physics, but after a year transferred to the doctorate program in statistics.

“After joining the physics department, he found out that he himself was actually interested in statistics more,” CUCSSA member and physics fellow Xiao-Yong Jin, GSAS ’11, wrote of his friend in an e-mail. He added that Yu “was really a responsible and brilliant friend whom everyone would like to work with.”

The most recent post from Yu’s personal blog, Oct. 26, written in his native Chinese, described his transition into statistics, discussing the three classes he took first semester and how challenging some were for him. Yu explained how he found inference easier than proofs, and that he was a teaching assistant for two classes last term—statistics and statistical physics.

Shen, who had originally encouraged Yu to join CUCSSA, had lunch with Yu the day before the tragedy, and the two friends talked about their studies. “He was doing great in his own path,” Shen said.

But despite Yu’s intellectual nature, he also embraced his lighter side. He was a member of the Columbia Chinese Basketball Association and the Columbia Graduate Student Consulting Club. His biography on the CUCSSA Web site mentioned his love of “movies, photography and delicacies,” and on Facebook, Yu joined the group, “Alfredo James Pacino (Al Pacino)—The Legend.”

Hours after news of his death, Yu’s Facebook wall began to fill with messages in both Chinese and English from friends offering their blessings and notes such as, “Heaven is a place nearby.”

Yu’s parents are currently in China, working on making their way to New York for an upcoming memorial service planned for this week. According to Shen, they are currently applying for visas to travel to the United States, but are hoping to get special visas that will expedite the process so they can arrive in a few days. Columbia will house Yu’s parents when they arrive in New York.

Since leaving China, Yu had not returned home in the year and a half he spent in graduate school, according to Li Song, a second-year statistics fellow who was friends with Yu at USTC.

In a University-wide e-mail sent on Saturday, University President Lee Bollinger expressed sympathy on behalf of the University.

“For today, I know we are united as a community in mourning the tragic loss of a young life,” he said in the e-mail.

A remembrance vigil, sponsored by GSAS, GSAS Dean Henry Pinkham, and the Office of the University Chaplain, will be held today at 5:30 p.m. in front of Low Library.

betsy.morais@columbiaspectator.com