C H Lai
Professor of Physics and
Vice-Provost,
C H Lai
Professor of Physics and
Vice-Provost,
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,
[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.
C H Lai
Office of the Provost
National University of Singapore
University Hall, Lee Kong Chian Wing, UHL #05-01D
21 Lower
Tel: (65) 6516-8751
Fax: (65) 6872-1763
email: phylaich@nus.edu.sg