C H Lai
Professor of
Physics
Deputy Director,
Centre for Quantum Technologies
Vice-Provost
(Academic Personnel)
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 and even further
back.]
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 molded 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, and the Deputy Director of the
Centre for Quantum
Technologies.
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.
Quantum
chaos, its characterization, semiclassical analysis/computation, and
applications in mesoscopic quantum structures)
2.
Quantum
information: definition, processing and computation at the quantum level;
3.
Complex
systems: complex networks, pattern formation and self-organization,
applications
He is the principal
investigator of a Complex Network 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