Dr. Dezhi Qi earned his bachelor's degree in hydrometallurgy of rare metals with an emphasis on rare earth metallurgy, and his master's degree in Chemistry. He has worked in a rare earth separation plant for one year, focusing on theory and technology. For three years, he worked as a process engineer for Avalon Rare Metals. He has developed one dynamic and one static simulation program to simulate and design the processes of rare earth separation. The simulation program is the first of its kind outside of China.