Two researchers from the Institute of Physics (IOP) and the Institute of Mathematics (IOM) have been awarded the 23rd Khwarizmi International Award (KIA). Research Fellow and Deputy Director of the IOP Hsiang-Nan Li and Research Fellow of the IOM Shun-Jen Cheng have been honored for their contributions to the advancement of science. The two scientists accepted the honor presented by Iranian First Vice President, Mohammad Reza Rahimi during an award ceremony held in Tehran on February 7.
The KIA is awarded annually by the Iranian Research Organization for Science and Technology (IROST) which is affiliated to Iran's Ministry of Science, Research and Technology. It is awarded to both Iranian nationals and foreigners for outstanding achievements in research, innovation and invention in fields related to science and technology.
Dr. Hsiang-Nan Li specializes in perturbative quantum chromodynamics (QCD). QCD is a theory of strong interaction as a fundamental force describing the interactions of quarks and gluons making up hadrons (a particle made of quarks held together by the aforementioned strong force). Using perturbative QCD, Dr. Li has gained the control of QCD dynamics in exclusive B meson decays in an effort to help extract the standard-model parameters, and justify new physics signals. B mesons are particles that consist of a "bottom" quark or antiquark plus another lighter antiquark or quark.
Dr. Li was the recipient of the 2007 Achievement in Asia Award of the Overseas Chinese Physics Association and Outstanding Research Award from the National Council of Sciences in 1997 and 2002. He received his Ph.D. in physics at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1992. He then became a postdoctoral fellow at Academia Sinica between 1992 and 1993. Subsequent to the appointments as a faculty member at National Chung-Cheng University and National Cheng-Kung University, Dr. Li rejoined Academia Sinica in 2001 as a Research Fellow.
Dr. Shun-Jen Cheng's specializations are Lie algebras, Lie superalgebras and their representation theories. A Lie algebra is an algebraic structure describing symmetry in mathematics and physics. A Lie superalgebra is a generalization needed in theoretical physics to explain the physical phenomenon of supersymmetry. Among Dr. Cheng's contributions are works that played an important role in the classification of Lie superalgebras of vector fields, which, in turn, played a fundamental part in the classification of superconformal algebras. Recently, Dr. Cheng, in collaboration with various collaborators, has formulated and proved a notion called super duality. Super duality connects the representation theories of Lie algebras and Lie superalgebras, and thus classical symmetry and supersymmetry.
Dr. Cheng was the recipient of Outstanding Research Award from the National Council of Sciences in 1997 and 1999, the Academia Sinica Research Award for Junior Research Investigators in 1999 and the Academia Sinica Investigator Award in 2007. After gaining a Ph.D. in mathematics from Harvard University in 1993, he joined National Cheng-Kung University and National Taiwan University as a faculty member of mathematics department. He became a Research Fellow at Academia Sinica in 2006.
The Khwarizmi International Award has been awarded annually since 1987. It has been conferred to non-Iranian nationals since 1992. Last year there were ten foreign KIA Laureates from ten different countries: Germany, Hungry, Australia, India, France, Belgium, Finland, Malaysia, Taiwan and Norway.
The award is named after Abu Jafar Mohammad Ibn Mousa Khwarizmi, an 8th Century Persian mathematician, astronomer and geographer who is considered the father of algebra as a result of his mathematical treatise by the same name published around 820 C.E. The word 'algebra' itself is said to be derived from the Arabic 'al-jabr,' one of the two operations used to solve quadratic equations that were first described in his book.
