I grew up in a poor rural area belonging to Lanzhou, Gansu Province, China. While in middle school, I became immensely fascinated by mathematics, and realized that my mathematics textbooks could not satisfy my thirst for knowledge. In a region where a library is unheard of, as a first-generation middle schooler, I had a lot of trouble finding extracurricular study materials, but I thoroughly studied the few good books I could get. In my last year in high school (that was in fact my second year in high school, which consisted of two years only back then), I transferred to a much better high school, Yongdeng County No. 2 High School, and participated in various high school mathematics competitions, culminating in the Top Prize in the Gansu Province Mathematics Competition in 1979. Later that year, I entered Lanzhou University, a leading university in China, and obtained my B.Sc. in mathematics in 1983, at the age of 20. Then I spent three years at Beijing Normal University, graduating with a M.Sc. in Mathematics in 1986. After teaching briefly at Hebei Normal University, I went to North Carolina State University, where I got my Ph.D. in mathematics (with concentration in algebra) in 1990 and published two papers on matrix theory.  I have been working at GSU since 1991. Thanks to two influential colleagues and collaborators, Drs. Frank Hall and Carolyn Eschenbach,