Kai He

Kai He arrived at Georgetown in the fall of 2008, after receiving a B.S. from Nanjing University. He entered the Industrial Leadership in Physics program, and eventually joined the research group of Marcos Rigol, which focuses on strongly correlated quantum many-body systems.

The ILP program was an important factor in influencing Kai’s decision to attend Georgetown.

“It was creative that at that moment there was a program that tried to relate more to industry rather than just academia,” Kai says. “It’s the nature of the practical and industry-oriented program that appealed to me.”

After finishing his coursework, Kai completed an apprenticeship at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is located in Gaithersburg, Maryland. He was able to work with collaborators of Dr. Rigol’s research group and to continue the same type of research he had been doing at Georgetown. Kai’s time at NIST gave him the opportunity to conduct interactive and collaborative research in an environment he would not have experienced through ordinary thesis research.

Kai returned to Georgetown and began work on his thesis, examining the equilibrium and non-equilibrium properties of ultra-cold atoms on optical lattice.

“So far I have two publications on one-dimensional quantum gas problems,” he says.

His most recent publication, “Noise correlation scalings: Revisiting the quantum phase transition in incommensurate lattices with hard-core bosons,” appeared in Physical Review A in January 2012.

After completing his degree, Kai plans to work in a field where he can put his quantitative reasoning skills to use.

“I will try to look for a place where I can apply my computational skills,” he says. “I’m interested in fields that need data analysis, although not necessarily in physics.”

In his free time, Kai enjoys watching soccer games, especially when Arsenal is playing.