Chapter 294: Best Young Speaker
Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
On the morning of the second day of the conference, Woolf called Lu Zhou.
“Our headhunting company has found a suitable manager according to your request. This manager has five years of experience in the intellectual property department at Verizon, and his resume is squeaky clean. When do you want to meet him?”
Lu Zhou was sitting in the hotel lobby enjoying his breakfast, and he thought for a moment before replying, “Let’s meet in a few days. I want to finish dealing with this matter by the end of January. I’m at the hotel near Berkeley. Ask him to come to San Francisco and reimburse his plane ticket.”
“Okay, professor,” Woolf respectfully said. “He’s in California, I will ask him to contact you as soon as possible.”
The sooner AM finished this task, the sooner Lu Zhou would pay them, and the sooner Woolf would get his commission.
Therefore, Woolf was even more enthusiastic than Lu Zhou to get this matter done.
Soon after Lu Zhou hung up on Woolf, he received a call from the former executive from Verizon. They agreed to meet at 2 p.m. at a coffee shop near Berkeley…
…
[White Sheridan. 35 years old, male, PhD in management from the University of Pennsylvania. Served as head of intellectual property department at Verizon, five years work experience…]
Lu Zhou placed the resume down and looked at the man sitting opposite him.
“Your resume is great. However, the one thing I don’t understand is that Verizon offered you a US$200,000 per year salary, but you decided to quit.”
White shrugged and said, “Head of the Intellectual Property Department at Verizon is a good position, but it can’t give me a sense of career accomplishment. There is nowhere for me to go. Compared to the other executives, I’m more like a lawyer.”
Lu Zhou: “What about now? The main business of Star Sky Technology is patent management, so your work will probably be the same as before, there won’t be much change.”
White didn’t hide his intentions. Instead, he smiled and said, “You’re right. However, Star Sky Technology can give me a US$300,000 per year salary, and Verizon can’t match that.”
US$300,000 per year salary definitely counted as upper cla.s.s in America. According to Gla.s.sdoor statistics, even Microsoft’s Chief Development Manager only earned US$294,000 per year.
Of course, that was only an estimate, it didn’t include benefits and bonuses.
In short, a US$300,000 salary was an irresistible offer for White.
Dreams were important, but money was even more important.
Lu Zhou was satisfied with this honest answer.
Although it would be better for White to talk about potential development plans for the company and corporate culture, he didn’t do this. The most important thing about White was his impressive resume and his extensive experience in patent management.
Lu Zhou smiled and reached out his right hand.
“Congratulations on your new job. I hope we can build a better Star Sky Technology under your management.”
White smiled and shook Lu Zhou’s hand.
“I promise you we can definitely do it.”
…
Lu Zhou originally wanted Star Sky Technology to be a company similar to Qualcomm which focused on research and development and to become the whale of the industry as well as investing all profits into scientific research.
After giving White a brief overview of Star Sky Technology’s development strategy, Lu Zhou ended this meeting.
The rest could be discussed through email.
After Lu Zhou finished his work with Star Sky Technology, he put his attention back on the academic conference.
Maybe it was because one of the greatest additive number theory problems, Goldbach’s conjecture, was solved, recently there had been an influx in number theory research theses.
Many scholars had done research on Waring’s Conjecture using the Group Structure Method and achieved great results.
For example, a PhD student from Columbia University was reporting his research results at the conference. He used the Group Structure Method to research on the g(6) value range.
Although he was far from solving the problem, his results were still inspiring, and he had received thunderous applause from the audience.
Lu Zhou was happy at all this.
Solving the Goldbach’s conjecture wasn’t very practical in and of itself.
However, if the tools that Lu Zhou created when solving Goldbach’s conjecture could be used by many other people, then his thesis in Annual Mathematics would be in the textbooks used by the future generation.
In a blink of an eye, a week had pa.s.sed, and the academic conference came to a successful conclusion.
Mr. Francis stood on the podium on stage. As usual, he used a gentle and steady voice to introduce himself to the young scholars in the venue.
“… Thank you, everyone, for coming to this mathematics conference. Thank you, Parker, Tesla… for sponsoring this event.” Mr. Francis adjusted his gla.s.ses and looked at the young scholars before he said, “Now it is time to give out the best young speaker award. I’m getting old now, let’s get the important stuff out of the way.”
The crowd smiled and gave Francis a round of applause.
Mr. Francis cleared his throat and said, “The best young speaker of this academic conference is…
“Vera Pulyuy from Princeton!”
The crowd burst into applause.
Vera stood next to Lu Zhou; her white cheeks instantly turned red.
She wasn’t prepared for this surprise at all. Lu Zhou patted her on the back and said, “Go on.”
He then gave her an encouraging look as he added, “This is your moment.”
“… Okay!”
Vera looked at Lu Zhou gratefully and nodded. She walked through the crowd and got on the stage.
Lu Zhou looked at her tiny figure and couldn’t help but think.
It’s good to be young…
Lu Zhou could still remember when he first won this prize. He was so excited that he couldn’t sleep for days. Jin Ling University and Yan University both congratulated him.
In addition to the honor, the award also carried a US$10,000 prize.
At that time, the US$10,000 prize was a huge amount to him.
However, Lu Zhou didn’t realize that among these scholars, he was one of the youngest ones, so he had no room to call Vera young…
Vera stood on the stage. Although she looked a bit nervous, she was still doing a lot better than when she first did her report.
The award presenter was the mathematics professor at Berkeley, Crafoord Prize winner, Tao Zhexuan. Vera was in Tao Zhexuan’s partial differential equations cla.s.s before.
Tao Zhexuan handed the certificate to Vera and said, “Congratulations, Miss Vera.”
Vera nodded nervously as she replied, “Thank you.”
Tao Zhexuan nodded as well.
He suddenly remembered something, so he continued to speak, “I remember that a year ago that you told me you really admired Professor Lu’s work and hoped that I could write a recommendation letter for you. At that time, I thought I made the correct decision; I still think I did, but I hope you don’t make me regret my decision.”
Vera was stunned; she had a confused expression.
“Professor? I’m not sure what you are trying to say?”
Tao Zhexuan shook his head and said, “Nothing, I just hope that you only admire his knowledge. In fact, I admire him as well. His talent in pure and applied mathematics is one of the best I have ever seen. However, his youth is the most valuable thing he has.
“His name will likely be noted down in history.
“And your recklessness might lead to some unwanted results.
“I hope that I had misunderstood, but if I didn’t, I hope that no matter what feelings you have for him, you should wait until after you graduate before you express those feelings.”