Dr. Gil-Ho Lee completed his B.S. in Chemistry and Physics from the Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Republic of Korea, in 2007. He later pursued his Ph.D. in Physics at POSTECH, completing his doctoral degree in 2014. After completing his Ph.D., Dr. Lee engaged in postdoctoral research in 2014 at POSTECH, followed by a postdoctoral position at Harvard University from 2014 to 2017. In 2017, he returned to POSTECH as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2021, a position he holds to this day. He has won several awards including Fulbright Visiting Scholar Fellowship (Fulbright Korea & the Department of State, USA, 2023), Young Scientist Award (Ministry of Science and ICT of Korea, 2022), 2023 National R&D Excellence 100 (Ministry of Science and ICT of Korea), to name a few. Dr. Lee's research primarily focuses on quantum transport phenomena, topological materials, and the integration of quantum nanodevices. His work explores macroscopic quantum effects in superconducting/graphene hybrid nanodevices, the development of single-photon detection technologies, and the study of topological superconductivity. He has made significant strides in understanding non-equilibrium quantum states, higher-order topological insulators, and relativistic electronic optics in graphene.
Dr. Lee's successfully demonstrated the formation of a steady Floquet-Andreev state in a graphene Josephson junction. This groundbreaking discovery allows for deeper investigation of non-equilibrium quantum states, an area of growing interest in condensed matter physics [Nature 2022]. Another significant contribution of Dr Lee is in the field of microwave detection technology by developing a microwave bolometer with theoretical sensitivity limits. Using the unique properties of graphene's linear band structure, he created a sensor that can detect microwave photons with unprecedented sensitivity with important implications for fields such as quantum computing, cosmic microwave background radiation research, and dark matter detection [Nature 2020]. Dr. Lee also provided the first experimental evidence showing that WTe2, a two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenide, exhibits higher-order topological insulating properties. His work revealed the existence of a one-dimensional hinge state, a key feature of higher-order topological insulators, by spatially visualizing the current flow through a Josephson junction using an innovative interference measurement technique. This work opens up new avenues for exploring topological superconductivity and the elusive Majorana fermions [Nature Materials 2020].

Dr. Kyohei Mukaida earned his Bachelor of Science in Physics from the University of Tokyo in 2010. He continued at the University of Tokyo for his Master of Science in Physics (2012) and his Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Physics (2015). After completing his Ph.D., Dr. Mukaida embarked on several prestigious postdoctoral fellowships. From 2015 to 2017, he was a JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow at the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (KIPMU). He then moved to Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) in Germany, where he worked as a postdoc from 2017 to 2020. From 2020 to 2021, Dr. Mukaida held a postdoctoral fellowship at CERN, working in the Theoretical Physics Department. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor at the Theory Center, Institute of Particle and Nuclear Studies (IPNS), KEK. He received Young Scientist Award in Theoretical Particle Physics (Particle Physics Medal) in 2017 and again in 2022 for his outstanding contributions to particle physics under extreme early-universe conditions. Dr. Mukaida's research bridges particle physics and cosmology, particularly focusing on the behavior of elementary particles in the early universe. His work spans topics such as inflation, dark matter, baryo/leptogenesis, and primordial black holes. He is particularly interested in the process of reheating following inflation, which involves the transition of the universe from inflationary expansion to the radiation-dominated phase, and how this impacts particle physics and the generation of matter.
Dr. Mukaida has significantly contributed to the study of Higgs inflation, a model driven by the Standard Model Higgs boson. His work revealed that reheating after Higgs inflation can be extremely violent, leading to the production of longitudinal Standard Model gauge bosons with sub-Planckian momentum. This discovery has raised critical questions about the theoretical consistency of Higgs inflation models, influencing the global research direction towards exploring nonminimal gravity to resolve these challenges [JCAP 2017]. In the context of reheating after inflation, he made an important contribution by identifying the bottleneck of thermalization in many inflation models [JHEP 2014], which impacts baryogenesis, leptogenesis, and dark matter production.
Dr. Mukaida has extensively explored various dark matter (DM) production mechanisms. He collaborated with experts in quark-gluon plasma physics to show that the freeze-out of DM in the primordial plasma shares the same underlying physics as quarkonium in QGP, leading to significant corrections in the DM density calculations [JHEP 2022].

Dr. Yong-Chun Liu is a Tenured Associate Professor at Department of Physics, Tsinghua University, China. He obtained the B.S. degree from School of Science, Beijing Jiaotong University in 2010 and obtained the Ph.D. degree from School of Physics, Peking University in 2015. After that he worked as an Associate Research Fellow at China Academy of Space Technology. In 2017 he joined Department of Physics, Tsinghua University, and worked successively as a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor (2017-2018), Tenure-Track Associate Professor (2019-2023) and Tenured Associate Professor (2024-now). His research focus on quantum optics and quantum precision measurement. He proposed dynamic control methods to efficiently prepare various macroscopic quantum states and proposed new methods for the improvement of magnetic field measurement sensitivity. He has published more than 90 papers (including 12 first/corresponding-author papers in Physical Review Letters), which are cited over 4000 times, with a H-index of 37. He served as the chief scientist of a National Key Research and Development Program Youth Project. He was selected as a young Changjiang Scholar of the Ministry of Education of China and won Rao Yutai fundamental optics award and Wang Daheng optics award of Chinese Optical Society.
Dr. Yong-Chun Liu's primary research contributions lie in the areas of quantum state preparation, quantum device development, and precision measurements, focusing on the manipulation of macroscopic quantum systems. He developed dynamic control methods to efficiently prepare macroscopic quantum states, including large-atom-number Schrödinger cat states and squeezed states. His innovative control techniques transformed one-axis twisting interactions into two-axis twisting interactions, which are more difficult to achieve in physical systems, thus breaking existing squeezing limitations and improving quantum measurement precision (PRL 2011). For development of quantum devices, he achieved significant breakthroughs in creating nonreciprocal photonic devices, enhancing isolation ratio and bandwidth while reducing insertion loss. His research includes using atomic collisions to control nonreciprocal light transmission with high isolation ratios and broad bandwidth (PRL 2020). Dr. Liu's contributions to precision magnetic field measurements have improved sensitivity by orders of magnitude. His work on enhancing dissipation control in atomic ensembles provided a new experimental upper limit for the spin-dependent fifth force, a parameter of interest in physics beyond the Standard Model (PRL 2023). These efforts push the boundaries of quantum technology and precise measurement, providing fundamental advancements for both theoretical and applied quantum science.

Dr. Danfeng Li obtained his BEng from Zhejiang University and MPhil from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He received his PhD in 2016 from the Department of Quantum Matter Physics at the University of Geneva and then joined Stanford University as a Swiss National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow. He has been an assistant professor at City University of Hong Kong since November 2020. Dr Li's main research interests span across condensed-matter physics and materials science, focusing on atomic-scale fabrication of oxide heterostructures and nanomembranes, kinetic based synthesis of unconventional quantum materials, low-dimensional superconductivity, and oxide interfaces for emergent states. In 2019, Dr. Danfeng Li and Professor Harold Hwang at Stanford University announced a groundbreaking discovery of a thin-film nickel oxide (nickelate) superconductor Nd0.8Sr0.2NiO2 (Nature 2019, 572, 624), which shattered the boundaries of conventional wisdom and ignited a new era of research on nickelate superconductivity. This discovery marked the end of a long and arduous journey in search of a new class of high temperature superconducting materials, offering an important vehicle to test theories of high temperature superconductivity. For Dr. Li's pioneering contribution in this field of "nickelate superconductors" he was recently named by MIT Technology Review in the article, "35 Innovators Under 35 (China)".

Dr. Li Li is currently a full professor at the Institute of Theoretical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing. He received his BSc (2009) from China University of Mining and Technology and his PhD (2014) from the Institute of Theoretical Physics, CAS, Beijing. Before joining the Institute of Theoretical Physics, CAS, Beijing as an associate professor in 2019, he did postdoctoral research work at the University of Crete, Greece and at Lehigh University, USA. He is currently leading the group "Integrated Quantum Optics Lab" in the Physics School of Peking University. Dr. Li's research interests focus on black hole physics, gauge/gravity duality, and cosmology. His research has resulted in 55 high-quality peer-reviewed papers, published in journals including Science Advances, Physical Review Letters, and the Journal of High Energy Physics. The citations of his publications are over 2000 with an h-index 27. He is an experimental nuclear astrophysicist, who has been engaged in experimental research on nuclear celestial bodies for many years. His main research focus is the measurement of key nuclear reactions in the evolution of celestial bodies. For example, recently he and his collaborators established the black hole no Cauchy horizon theorem [JHEP 03, 263, 2021], and set strict restrictions on the number of black hole horizons based on energy conditions [Class. Quant. Grav. 39, no.3, 035005, 2022]. The work revealed that matter not only promotes the formation of an event horizon, but also prevents the appearance of multiple horizons inside black holes. Dr. Li's other important research works include the prediction of novel behavior of amorphous solids [Sci Adv 2022] and uncovering the existence of universal mechanisms in the out-of-equilibrium behavior of strongly coupled fluids [PRL 2022].

Dr. Liyong Zhang received his BSc in applied physics in 2008 from Hebei University of Science and Technology, China and his PhD in 2013 in nuclear astrophysics from the Institute of Modern Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, China. He did his postdoctoral research at the School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, UK and then joined Beijing Normal University, China as an associate professor in May 2019. He has been a full professor at Beijing Normal University since July 2022. Dr. Zhang is a brilliant young researcher who has made significant contributions to the frontier field of nuclear astrophysics through his work done at the Jinping Underground Nuclear Astrophysics (JUNA) project for many years, making substantial contributions to our understanding of nuclear astrophysics through direct reaction measurements down to the Gamow window. His remarkable achievements in the JUNA project include his work on the ¹⁹F(p, γ)²⁰Ne experiment [Nature 610, 656, 2022]. Through this project, he and his collaborators discovered a new resonance at 225 keV and incorporated this result into Pop III stellar evolution calculations. The outcome of their work revealed that ⁴⁰Ca can be produced in reasonable amounts during the static hydrogen burning stage, as opposed to the explosive burning stage, which was previously predicted in models of massive stellar evolution. Another noteworthy research result of Dr. Zhang's work is his contribution to the ¹⁹F(p, αγ)¹⁶O experiment, wherein he and his team succeeded in providing, to date, the most precise reaction rate [PRL 127, 152702, 2021]. The experiment measured the reaction cross-section for the first time down to the Gamow window energy.

Dr. Ma's main research interests lie in the realms of topological physics, non-Hermitian physics in classical-wave platforms and metamaterials. He studies topological physics using classical waves. His works have not only exemplified the universality of topology as a foundation in physics but have also vitalized the study of classical waves by bringing new tools for wave manipulations. For instance, his research opens a new frontier for topological physics by linking it to non-Hermitian systems - a new physical formalism that describes open systems. Singularities called "exceptional points" (EPs) can emerge in the parameter space of non-Hermitian systems. Dr. Ma was the first to experimentally realize higher-order exceptional points.

Dr. Wang is currently leading a group called the "Integrated Quantum Optics Lab" in the Physics School of Peking University. His research focuses on quantum information science and technologies with photons. He has developed large-scale integrated quantum photonic circuits and devices in silicon, and has developed versatile technologies to understand quantum foundations and to explore applications of quantum information theory in communications, simulations and computing. Dr. Wang realized the world's first integrated optical quantum chip with over 500 components, which significantly pushed the development of the field. He has made significant contributions to on-chip generation, manipulation and measurement of complex entanglement structures, including multiphoton entanglement and multidimensional entanglement.

Dr Wu, with his collaborators, studied theoretical topics related to r-process nucleosynthesis and neutrino flavor conversions in mergers and supernovae. His work showed that r-process nucleosynthesis in outflows ejected viscously from post-merger black-hole accretion disk systems can robustly produce elemental abundance distributions that match well with what is inferred from the solar system and metal-poor star observations. For the theoretical modeling of kilonova lightcurves powered by the nuclear energy released from the decay of unstable nuclei made in the r-process, Dr. Wu and his collaborators found that the thermalization of particle species produced by different decay channels can largely affect the observable. He performed neutrino detection analysis and nucleosynthesis calculations to predict the elemental yields. For neutrino flavor conversions, he showed that neutron star merger remnants generally host favorable conditions for novel fast neutrino flavor conversions to occur within a length scale of centimeters.

Dr. Fang has played a key role in solving two important problems in this field, known as "diagnosis" and "classification", with the key concept of "topological invariant", a global quantum number that is used to distinguish topological materials from non-topological ones and to classify various types of topological materials. Note that the types and forms of all topological invariants depend only on two factors: symmetry and dimensionality. Identifying all invariants for a given dimension and symmetry group of interest is, therefore, an important "classification problem" for theorists. Dr. Fang's recent works in Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 246402 (2017) and Nature Communications 9, 3530 (2018), for the first time, identify four new Z2 topological invariants in 3D for the following spatial symmetries: rotation, screw rotation, roto-reflection, and inversion. He then used a theoretical tool, "layer construction", to solve the classification problem.

Dr. Otani has succeeded in high-frequency acceleration of muons for the first time in the world. He devised the unique combination of muon cooling through generating negative muonium ion(the bound state of a positive muon and two electrons), decelerating muons down to less than 1 KeV (by simply injecting muons into a thin metal film), and then accelerating and bunching muons with a radio-frequency quadrupole linear accelerator (RFQ). This unique method has solved the decades-old problem in a limited experimental environment and will be the basis for a variety of future projects in high energy physics, including precise measurement of muons, neutrino factory, muon collider, and so on.

Dr. Shen's works mainly focus on the direct and indirect measurement on this "Holy Grail" reaction. He develops the indirect technique based on the independent (11B, 7Li) transfer reaction with less breakup effect and experimentally determines the external-capture contribution in the 12C(α, γ)16O for the first time. This work results in a significant increase of the total S factor which is now in good agreement with the value obtained by reproducing supernova nucleosynthesis calculations with the solar-system abundances.

Dr. Jinsong Zhang's research has focused on the low-temperature transport study of topological quantum matter and two-dimensional (2D) layered materials under electric and magnetic fields, including topological insulators (TI), the quantum anomalous Hall effect (QAHE), and quantum phase transitions. His techniques and works include (1) band structure engineering in topological insulators, (2) the first experimental realization of QAHE, (3) topology-driven magnetic quantum phase transition, and (4) the axion insulator and Chern insulator phases in intrinsic 2D magnetic TI MnBi2Te4, which have demonstrated new approaches to study fundamentally new and unexpected physical behaviors in metastable materials.

Dr. Liu is an experimentalist working on particle physics and nuclear physics, with the Beijing Spectrometer III (BES III), Belle/Belle II, and anti-Proton ANnihilation at Darmstadt (PANDA) experiments. He participated in the discovery of a charged charmonium-like state Zc(3900) at the BES III experiment in 2013, and made the same observation at the Belle experiment. Note that the Zc(3900) particle is regarded as the first convincing candidate for a tetraquark particle by the hadron physics community, a highly acclaimed event reported in Physics and selected by the American Physics Society as the number one standout story of the "Top Eleven Highlighted Events" in physics in 2013.

Dr. Kobayashi has led the research field of halo formation in unstable nuclei using radioisotope (RI) beams at RIKEN Radioactive Isotope Beam Factory (RIBF). His main achievements include spectroscopic studies on novel halo nuclei 37Mg, 31,29Ne, and 22C via inclusive breakup reactions. In addition, he worked on a lifetime measurement of the excited states of the unstable nucleus 43S at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL), Michigan State University (MSU) and a study of pygmy dipole resonances on 208Pb via (p,p'γ) reactions at the Research Center for Nuclear Physics (RCNP), Osaka University.

Aharonovich's group explores new quantum emitters in wide bandgap materials and aims to fabricate quantum nanophotonic devices on single chips for the next generation's quantum computing, quantum cryptography, and quantum bio-sensing needs. In 2016, Aharonovich led his team to discover the first quantum emitter in 2D materials operating at room temperature. He co-authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications, including one of the most cited reviews on diamond photonics. More recently, he has led his team to realize a new generation of plasmonic devices.

Liu is one of the pioneers in quantum simulation for synthetic gauge field and topological quantum phases. He proposed the first model of the (quantum) spin Hall effect for ultracold atoms and has successfully realized one-dimensional spin-orbit coupling (Abelian synthetic gauge field) and two-dimensional spin-orbit coupling (non-Abelian synthetic gauge field) for ultracold atoms, in addition to establishing a systematic theory for realizing, engineering, and detecting topological phases. These works have advanced quantum simulation for synthetic gauge field and topological quantum phases to a highly active and broadly recognized research topic in ultracold atoms. Importantly, for condensed matter physics, he proposed the concept of symmetry protected non-Abelian statistics of Majorana zero modes in topological superconductors, which has added a new family member of non-Abelian statistics to quantum statistics and has fundamentally overturned the traditional view of non-Abelian statistics. His works have creatively changed the theory and has had a crucial impact on the related experimental investigations.

Song He has played a key role in recent advances in better understanding the scattering amplitudes in gauge theories, gravity, and string theory. He is renowned for discovering new ways of computing scattering amplitudes and unraveling their elegant mathematical structures and hidden relations. Since Witten's celebrated proposal of twistor string theory in 2003, there has been enormous progress in computing and understanding the scattering amplitudes of quantum field theory (QFT), which is conceivably the foundation of particle physics. In this fast-growing frontier of theoretical high energy physics, Song He's works not only enable more precise predictions of the Standard Model for high-energy experiments, such as the LHC, but also shed new light on the structures of QFT and the fundamental issues in quantum gravity and string theory.