On September 17, 2024, Yang Qiu, a Mathematics graduate of Zhiyuan, was invited to attend the "Dialogue with Alumni" activity to interact with currently registered Zhiyuan students. Qiu is currently working at the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, School of Physics, Peking University, as an Assistant Professor and doctoral supervisor. He had received his doctorate degree in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences from the Courant Institute of Mathematics, New York University, USA in 2017, and continued his postdoctoral research at New York University. In 2020, he joined the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, USA as a researcher. He joined Peking University in 2023. He has been focusing on mid-latitude and tropical convective organization for a long time, and has made a series of innovative achievements in multi-scale interaction, mesoscale convective system, and large-scale convective organization with the establishment of basic theories as his research characteristics. So far, he has published 14 SCI first author/corresponding author papers and 6 collaborative papers in international mainstream professional journals (JAS, JCLI, JAMES, GRL). Since 2022, Yang Qiu has served as Deputy Editorial Board Member of the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, an international core journal in the field of atmospheric dynamics.

Yang Qiu presented observational experiments, numerical simulations, basic theories, and artificial intelligence applications in the field of atmospheric science research, opening the door to new knowledge for students. He focused on such issues as "how to choose a suitable/interesting major", "the significance and necessity of undergraduate scientific research", "how to choose elective courses", and "academic planning and prospects after graduation", which are of high concerns to the students, and inspired them by sharing his own learning experiences.

This event attracted nearly 50 students to participate, and the atmosphere of discussion was very active. Qiu said that "action matters more than thinking", and one can only understand the direction he/she is really interested in by taking the first step of scientific research. He encouraged the students to be "bold" to "knock on" their favorite teacher's office door, just as he bravely knocked on the door of Professor Hu Dan and CAI Shenou while studying at Zhiyuan himself, and these good teachers met on the road of scientific research to give him professional scientific research guidance, guide him to explore the direction of scientific research, and cultivate his correct scientific research values. He said: "In this era of abundant talents, the opportunity of exhibiting oneself is quite necessary, one needs to learn to sell their work to others, which is also a very important quality of conducting scientific research." He also stressed the importance of English accumulation. Despite the rapid development of technology, the improvement of one's English ability is not only the key to obtaining international academic resources, but also the basis for further academic studies and scientific research exchanges. In addition, artificial intelligence has been extended to various fields, he suggested that students can learn programming in advance to cultivate programming ability. Regarding the students' "social dilemma in scientific research", he said that scientific research includes definitely not only "hard work", it is active and open, and scientific research communication is also an important embodiment of social ability.

Zhang Yaoyu, Zhiyuan alumni, Associate Professor of the School of Mathematical Sciences and head teacher of Mathematics Class (class of 2020) of Zhiyuan College, served as the host of the event, and Xu Zhiqin, Zhiyuan alumni, Associate Professor of the Academy of Natural Sciences/School of Mathematical Sciences, also participated in the event. The two teachers are Yang Qiu’s previous Zhiyuan classmate, and they get the grand reunion through the event.