معرفی
Prof. Wei Li is a Professor of Physics & Astronomy at Rice University, serving as Co-Chair for Graduate Admissions and Recruiting. He joined the faculty in 2012 after completing his Ph.D. at MIT (2009) and a postdoc at MIT working on the CMS experiment at the LHC. His research focuses on understanding emergent behaviors in quantum chromodynamics (QCD) and nuclear matter under extreme conditions, alongside developing novel particle acceleration and detection technologies. He leads the CMS high-energy nuclear program and directs the time-of-flight detector upgrade for the HL-LHC project.
Education: B.A. in Physics from University of Science and Technology of China (2004); Ph.D. in Physics from MIT (2009).
Research interests include quark-gluon plasma (QGP) formation in small systems, heavy ion collisions, and detector upgrades. Recent breakthroughs include discovering QGP droplets in proton-proton collisions, challenging conventional paradigms about QGP formation. His group pioneered this discovery and contributed to precision measurements of QGP properties such as the speed of sound.
Awards include the U.S. DOE Early Career Award, Sloan Research Fellowship, and PECASE. He advises multiple graduate students and leads collaborative projects like the International Workshop on Muon-Ion Colliders. His team is active in the CMS collaboration, focusing on detector technology and HL-LHC readiness.
Labs: T.W. Bonner Laboratory at Rice University. Current projects include endcap timing layer upgrades and photonuclear interaction studies at the LHC.
