As word of 23-year old Mengyao “May” Zhou’s death trickled out, the graduate community registered shock and sadness, and many expressed surprise at the apparent suicide of the second-year doctoral student in electrical engineering.

“It was a terrible shock, as I think we were all hoping she would show up soon,” said Graduate Student Council (GSC) co-chair and electrical engineering student Paul Gurney. “Like all of May’s grad. student colleagues at Stanford, I’m really sad about the latest news.”

Zhou had been missing since Saturday, and her body was found locked in the trunk of her car at Santa Rosa Junior College. Police have tentatively ruled her death a suicide.

Some students expressed surprise that a student as driven, ambitious and seemingly successful as Zhou would have taken her own life.

“I am very shocked to hear this, and I can’t believe she could have committed suicide. Even after she was found missing, I wasn’t expecting her to turn out dead,” wrote Yuki Konda in an e-mail to the Daily. A fellow electrical engineering student, Konda took a class with Zhou and worked on a computer vision project with her.

“She was a very driven individual and the main motivator of our group,” he added. “She did a lot of work.”

Konda, like others, said that he was surprised to find out that foul play was not involved.

“I think it’s just odd,” he said, adding that figuring out what might have driven Zhou to take her own life is “hard to say since we can’t really see inside her mind.”

Many graduate students found out about Zhou’s death through e-mail lists. One e-mail from Director of the Graduate Life Office Chris Griffith, which labeled the death “an apparent suicide,” was sent to residents of Rains House, where Zhou lived. Students then forwarded the e-mail to other graduate student lists.

“The atmosphere here has been concerned [since her disappearance],” said Eva Steinle-Darling, one of two head Community Associates at Rains. “I haven’t spoken to anyone who knew her personally, but everyone was anxious and wondering.”

Steinle-Darling also said that Zhou’s roommate is currently off-campus with family friends in an effort to stay away from the media.

Zhou was also a member of Women in Electrical Engineering (WEE) until her death. In an e-mail to the Daily, WEE presidents Ana Bertran Ortiz and Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan praised Zhou’s academic prowess.

“May was a driven student who was on her way to embarking on a promising

research program,” they said. “She seemed to have acclimated well to the academic life in the department and Stanford in general.”

Zhou was an undergraduate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) before coming to Stanford to pursue graduate studies. Within a year of her arrival at the Farm, she was awarded the Gabilan Fellowship to fund her research.

According to students who knew her, Zhou passed the electrical engineering qualifying exams, which can often be a stressful time for graduate students, on her first attempt as a first-year student last January.

“Transition into graduate student life at Stanford and the Electrical Engineering department can be challenging at times,” Ortiz and Sivaramakrishnan said.

Most students also expressed sympathy for Zhou’s family.

“My thoughts now are with her family and friends,” Gurney said. “I can’t even imagine how difficult this must be for them.”