Lu Mingyuan flipped to one of the pages.
Li Dong lowered his head to look.
"A Hybrid Tikhonov-Variational Regularization Scheme for Ill-Posed Spectral Inverse Problems—Residual Phase Coupling with Cyclic Weights"
Li Dong stared for several seconds without speaking.
His gaze swept directly down to the author attribution line.
First Author: Engelhardt, Department of Applied Mathematics, Technical University of Munich.
Corresponding Author: Engelhardt.
Co-authors: Three of his own students from the Munich University of Technology.
Engelhardt.
Li Dong knew the name, but wasn’t particularly familiar with it.
A professor in his early fifties from the Department of Applied Mathematics at the Munich University of Technology, who specialized in the field of inverse problems.
In Europe’s inverse problem circles, he was considered upper-second-tier.
The man had never been on Li Dong’s radar before.
But this time, while Engelhardt’s affiliated institution was indeed the Munich University of Technology, the group he was actually with was part of Albrecht’s major research group under Max Planck, responsible for the mathematical inversion component.
Li Dong’s brow furrowed even tighter.
He closed the journal and looked up at Lu Mingyuan.
"Teacher Lu."
"Then their previous *Nature* paper...?"
Lu Mingyuan shook his head.
"Still under review."
Li Dong asked again.
"That patent..."
Lu Mingyuan shook his head again.
"Still in the public comment period."
Li Dong closed his eyes for a moment.
He understood.
The moment this journal article was published...
Engelhardt and his team had seized the most critical thing—priority.
From now on, any group in the world working on inverse problem regularization and applying it to single-atom spectral inversion...
...if their work followed the Tikhonov-variational path, they would all have to cite this paper.
They would all have to write a line in their introductions: "see Engelhardt et al., 2023."
And that one sentence was enough for the people who controlled corporate and government funding.
Because Engelhardt and Albrecht were part of the same group to begin with.
With the group’s mathematical inversion work already published in *Inverse Problems*, it meant the toughest hurdle was already behind them.
The rest, whether it was the *Nature* paper or the patent, was just a matter of time.
To outsiders, their group had already succeeded.
As Li Dong was lost in thought, Lu Mingyuan spoke again.
His voice was soft.
"Li Dong, about Huaxuan..."
"The negotiations fell through."
Li Dong’s head snapped up.
His eyes were wide with disbelief.
He wasn’t an idiot.
’He knew better than anyone what Huaxuan Technology had gained from him over the past year or so.’
Lin Wei was no fool.
As long as it wasn’t something too outrageous, there was no way Huaxuan would let negotiations with Yan University break down.
Li Dong asked quickly.
"What happened?"
Lu Mingyuan gave a bitter smile.
"We can’t afford it."
Li Dong frowned.
"How much does Huaxuan want?"
Lu Mingyuan paused.
"4.8 million."
4.8 million wasn’t a lot, really.
The manufacturing process for the probe Wu Kai’s research group needed was not simple.
First, a 250-micrometer diameter PtIr wire had to be placed in a special etching solution to slowly etch out the tip.
After the etching...
For the entire process, just the machine time on the focused ion beam instrument would burn through tens of thousands per shift.
Moreover, Huaxuan Technology’s production line was originally set up to run large batches of standard products.
To free up a line and assign two engineers specifically to monitor the process for a small, non-standard custom job like Wu Kai’s was another major expense.
For this single order, including machine time, labor, and materials, Huaxuan’s own costs would exceed 4.8 million.
After hearing this, Li Dong was a bit puzzled.
"Our project group... is out of money?"
He remembered clearly that when Zhang Lufang brought him into Wu Kai’s group, she had mentioned something to him.
Although the group wasn’t as well-funded as their counterparts over in Hecheng, it still had a budget of nearly 100 million.
How could they not even come up with 4.8 million?
Lu Mingyuan seemed to have seen his confusion and said,
"Li Dong, with this paper published..."
He pointed to the copy of *Inverse Problems*.
"Our next round of government funding probably won’t be approved."
It was only then that it dawned on Li Dong.
Government funding requires innovation.
And now, because of Engelhardt’s paper, their project was seen by others as having been downgraded from "original research" to "follow-up research."
The moment the government funding committee sees the phrase "follow-up research"...
Lu Mingyuan wasn’t finished.
"And then there’s the corporate side."
"Le Pu Medical has already sent a letter."
Li Dong had a general idea about the company Le Pu Medical.
It was one of China’s leading manufacturers of cardiovascular interventional devices, specializing in coronary stents, left atrial appendage occluders, and, in the last two years, had begun developing nano-drug delivery systems.
A few years ago, they had collaborated with another group in Hecheng on a type of microsphere for targeted myocardial delivery.
"Le Pu was supposed to make their second installment payment mid-year."
"A letter came this morning."
"It says they need to re-run the project approval review."
"They said we’ll talk after their internal review committee finishes its evaluation."
"They didn’t say when the review would be concluded."
Li Dong’s heart sank.
The phrase "re-run the project approval review" sounded quite standard on the surface.
But in the world of scientific research, everyone understood the subtext.
’A review? What are they reviewing?’
’Are they reviewing the competence of Wu Kai’s group?’
’No, they’re reviewing whether it’s still "meaningful" to invest this money.’
Lu Mingyuan sighed and added one last thing.
"Whether we can salvage the deal..."
"...I don’t know."
The room fell silent once more.

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