C H Lai

 

Professor of Physics and

Vice-Provost, National University of Singapore

 

 

 




C H Lai studied at The University of Chicago for both his undergraduate and graduate degrees. His PhD thesis research was in weak interactions phenomenology, carried out at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Batavia, Illinois, under the supervision of Chris Quigg.

[For his scientific lineage, look Here .]

He then spent two years at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, learning the new tricks in perturbative QCD calculations and experiencing Danish beers and May Day rallies.

Since then he has been back to this part of the world, first as a lecturer in the Department of Mathematics, then lecturer, senior lecturer, associate professor and professor in the Department of Physics, the National University of Singapore. Somewhere in between the years, he was part of the efforts in establishing computational science on campus, and gently moulded the developments of nonlinear dynamics and quantum information science in the Physics Department here.

Between 1994 and 1997, he was the Chairman of the Computational Science Program, and later the first Head of the Department of Computational Science. He was also a Vice-Dean in the Faculty of Science, taking care of various research activities and coordination, as well as the graduate study matters during 1996-2000. He held the position as the Dean of the Faculty of Science from July 2000 until June 2003. Currently, he is Vice-Provost (Academic Personnel) of the National University of Singapore.

Research Interests

His current research interests are a far cry from his graduate and postdoc days -- in fact he has given up particle phenomenology and field theory altogether (well, almost). In the last few years, he has been dabbling in chaotic dynamics and complex system, and occasionally some fundamental questions in theoretical physics. More focused attention is being paid at this time to the

1.     synchronization and control of chaos and applications in secure communication;

2.     quantum chaos, its characterization, semiclassical analysis/computation, and applications in mesoscopic quantum structures (The World of Quantum Chaos)

3.     information: definition, processing and computation at the quantum level; quantum information technology

4.     complex systems: complex networks, pattern formation and self-organization, applications

 

He is the principal investigator of a nonlinear dynamics project with the Temasek Laboratories.

Publications

 


C H Lai
Office of the Provost
National University of Singapore
University Hall, Lee Kong Chian Wing, UHL #05-01D

21 Lower Kent Ridge Road, Singapore 119077
Republic of Singapore

 

Tel: (65) 6516-8751

Fax: (65) 6872-1763
email:
phylaich@nus.edu.sg