Hongji Wei selected as a Finalist in National Research Competition: APS LeRoy Apker Award

Congradulations to Hongji Wei for becoming a finalist for the American Physical Society's LeRoy Apker Award!  This annual research competition honors outstanding achievement in physics by undergraduate students across the country.  Each of the six finalists receives a $2000 cash prize and also earns their host department an additional $1000 to support future undergraduate research activities (thanks again, Hongji!).   Hongji's research in theoretical gravitational physics focuses on understanding classical and semi-classical properties of black holes as a pathway to formulating a full theory of quantum gravity.  Advised by Prof. Sam Gralla, Hongji worked on the structure of gravitational scattering as well as the decoherence effects of spinning black holes.  Notably, he found that black holes cease to decohere their surroundings in the so-called extremal limit, supporting the intuition that such objects should behave like zero-temperature objects.  

Hongji is currently a graduate student at Harvard University, where he explores the connections between quantum mechanics and gravity. He aims to improve our understanding of quantum gravity and test ideas like black holes being quantum systems and spacetime having a holographic nature.