I was born on June 27, 1965, in a small town in the northeast of China. After my graduation from the physics department of Peking University in 1987, I was recommended to the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP), Chinese Academy of Sciences as a graduate student. I knew nothing about high energy physics at that time, however. Finally I found that I was really interested in elementary particles and their interactions.
After I finished my PhD thesis on B-meson physics and CP violation in July 1993, I moved to the University of Munich to work on the problem of fermion masses and flavor mixing. Starting from a new phenomenological point of view, Prof. Harald Fritzsch and I proposed an unconventional pattern of lepton flavor mixing with one small and two large angles in the autumn of 1995. That was actually my first paper on neutrino physics. I became a JSPS postdoc fellow of Nagoya University in March 1996, working on B-factory physics. Two years later, I returned to Munich, a dream city to me. The beginning of a new epoch in neutrino physics was marked by the exciting Super-Kamiokande experimental result of atmospheric neutrino oscillations. Since then I have paid a lot of attention to the elusive neutrinos in a professional fashion.
I joined the theory division of IHEP in the spring of 2001 as a staff member. IHEP is the most important laboratory of high-energy physics in China. The researches carried out here include the tau-charm physics based on BEPC, theoretical particle and nuclear physics, cosmic ray and astrophysics, accelerator physics and technology, synchrotron radiation technology and applications, etc. The location of IHEP is convenient for visitors to go downtown, in particular the Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, by taking the subway.
I got acquainted with my wife in October 1989 and got married to her in January 1990 at IHEP. Our daughter is now 8 years old. One of her many dreams is to have a job similar to mine in the future, mainly because a theorist's working time is not necessarily subject to an 8am to 5pm schedule. "Then I can sleep in every morning", she concluded. That is a cute child's understanding of her father's life.
An enjoyable life style for me is to travel widely in the sunshine and to experience Einstein's unification of space and time. That feeling does not require the introduction of extra dimensions in my heart.
|