Tjonnie Li

  • Innovation Award in 2018 at Chinese University of Hong Kong

Tjonnie received his BA and MSci in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge (2009), and his PhD in Physics from the Dutch National Institute for Subatomic Physics (2013). Prior to joining The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2015, he spent two years at the California Institute of Technology as a Rubicon Postdoctoral Fellow. He is now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics of The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Currently

Tjonnie's research interests are in all aspects of gravitational-wave physics, including its links to astronomy, the strong-field dynamics of spacetime, ultra-dense matter and cosmology. He was involved in the Nobel Prize winning detection of gravitational waves by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). His group is actively involved in the operation and scientific output of current generation gravitational-wave detectors, including the US-based LIGO and the Japan-based Kamioka Gravitational Wave Detector (KAGRA), and is studying the potential of future generation detectors such as the Einstein Telescope and Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA).

Tjonnie's personal awards include the 2013 Stefano Braccini Thesis Prize, the 2017 RGC Early Career Award and the 2018 Croucher Innovation Award, and he has been awarded the 2016 Gruber Prize in Cosmology and the 2016 Special Breakthrough Prize as part of the LIGO team for the discovery of gravitational waves.