Haiyan Gao ( zh, 高海燕) is a Chinese-American

nuclear physicist Nuclear physics is the field of physics that studies atomic nuclei and their constituents and interactions, in addition to the study of other forms of nuclear matter. Nuclear physics should not be confused with atomic physics, which studies the ...

whose research concerns the structure of nucleons,

quantum chromodynamics In theoretical physics, quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is the theory of the strong interaction between quarks mediated by gluons. Quarks are fundamental particles that make up composite hadrons such as the proton, neutron and pion. QCD is a type ...

, and low-energy fundamental symmetries and symmetry violations, and has included accurate measurements of the size of

proton A proton is a stable subatomic particle, symbol , H+, or 1H+ with a positive electric charge of +1 ''e'' elementary charge. Its mass is slightly less than that of a neutron and 1,836 times the mass of an electron (the proton–electron mass ...

s. She is the Henry W. Newson Distinguished Professor of Physics at

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

, and associate laboratory director for nuclear and particle physics at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. Beyond her research in physics, she is also known as having a "keen interest in promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in the sciences".

Education and career

Gao grew up in Shanghai, and was encouraged to go into science by her father and by a female high school physics teacher. She studied physics at Tsinghua University, graduating in 1988, and came to the US for graduate study in physics at the California Institute of Technology, completing her doctorate there in 1994. Her dissertation, ''Measurement of the neutron magnetic form factor from inclusive quasielastic scattering of polarized electrons from polarized 3HE'', was supervised by Robert D. McKeown. She became a researcher at

Argonne National Laboratory Argonne National Laboratory is a science and engineering research United States Department of Energy National Labs, national laboratory operated by University of Chicago, UChicago Argonne LLC for the United States Department of Energy. The facil ...

and then a faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before moving to Duke University as an associate professor in 2002. She became chair of the physics department at Duke in 2011, was named Henry W. Newson Distinguished Professor of Physics in 2012, and served as vice chancellor for academic affairs at Duke Kunshan University from 2015 to 2019. She became associate laboratory director for nuclear and particle physics at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in 2021, while continuing to keep her position at Duke.

Recognition

Gao was named a

Fellow of the American Physical Society The American Physical Society honors members with the designation ''Fellow'' for having made significant accomplishments to the field of physics. The following lists are divided chronologically by the year of designation. * List of American Physic ...

(APS) in 2007, after a nomination from the APS Division of Nuclear Physics, "for her extensive contributions to understanding the quark/hadron transition region and for determinations of the nucleon electromagnetic form factors".

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Gao, Haiyan Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Chinese physicists Chinese women physicists American physicists American women physicists Tsinghua University alumni California Institute of Technology alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty Duke University faculty Brookhaven National Laboratory staff Fellows of the American Physical Society 21st-century American women scientists