Si wins Humboldt Research Award

Rice University theoretical physicist Qimiao Si has received a Humboldt Research Award from Germany’s Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

Qimiao Si

The prestigious award recognizes the scholarly scientist’s lifetime achievements. Recipients are academics whose fundamental discoveries, new theories or insights have had a significant impact on their own disciplines and who are expected to continue producing cutting-edge achievements.

The award provides funds for Si, Rice’s Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor of Physics and Astronomy, to undertake prolonged collaborations with colleagues in Germany.

Si said he will use the award to collaborate with scientists at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. He also will continue his work with researchers at the Max Planck Institutes in Dresden, Germany, with whom he has had many years of collaborations based on his theory of quantum criticality.

“I am honored to receive this recognition from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation,” Si said. “The opportunity for prolonged research in Germany is particularly meaningful to me,
because I have had a decadelong fruitful collaboration with physics colleagues there.”

Si studies theoretical condensed matter physics. He has made seminal contributions to the theory of quantum phase transitions of strongly correlated electron systems, and to the physics of unconventional and high temperature superconductivity at the border of magnetism.